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EVIDENCES 


OF 


REVEALED RELIGION. 


BY 


EDWARD” THOMSON, D.D., LL. D., 


Late a Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 
—PFBIRI— 


CINCINNATI: 
WALDEN AND STO W.E. 
NEW YORK: PHILLIPS & HUNT. 


Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 
HITCHCOCK & WALDEN, 


In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, 


4 


PREFACE. 


HESE lectures were preached before the Theo- 

logical School of the Boston University, only a 
few months before the author’s death. The same 
course was repeated in the Evanston Biblical Insti- 
tute, and in both cases with the earnest desire of 
the hearers for their publication. 

Edward Thomson was one of the most graceful 
writers and eloquent speakers ever bestowed—by a 
Providence liberal in that direction—on the Ameri- 
can Church. He is dead, and the pen which in- 
structed and the voice which delighted have lost 
their functions forever. But the press remains, and 
through this he may yet speak to the thousands he 
delighted while living. In the volume herewith pre- 
sented, the reader has the principal lectures and dis- 
courses that, years ago, made the chapel of the 
College at Delaware such a delightful and crowded 


resort on Sunday afternoons, that charmed intelli- 
Ill 


IV PREFACE. 


gent listeners in the metropolitan churches of Cin- 
cinnati and New York, that held conferences spell- 
bound after their author became Bishop, and that 
finally distilled themselves into the note-books and 
memories of the hearers. 

Hundreds who heard Bishop Thomson with silent 
awe and rapture while living, will linger with equal 
pleasure over these pages that embalm him, dead. 
When, at the late General Conference, the eloquent 
William Morley Punshon, himself one of the greatest 
of living orators, pronounced Edward Thomson the 
“Chrysostom of the American pulpit,” no man could 
say that the tribute was misapplied or the eulogy 
was undeserved. We commend the volume to the 


careful perusal of thoughtful readers. 
EDITOR. 


a 


CONTENTS. 


: LEcTURE. 
ig Gop, e e e e e ° e 


II. SPIRITUALITY, . F : ° ° 


III. IMMORTALITY, J : ° ° ° 
IV. MorAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD, ‘ ° 
V. LIFE A PROBATION, : 7 . ° 


VI. FuTuRE PUNISHMENT, . ° ° ° 


VII. NEcEsSSITY OF THE GOSPEL, - ° 
VIII. ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL, ° 

IX. CHRIST OUR PROPHET, . . ° 
X. CHRIST OUR PRIEST, : . . 

XI. CHRIST OUR KING, 4 ° A ° 
XII. MIRACLEs, . 3 - ° ° 


XIII. OBJECTIONS TO THE Cross, : . 


107 
133 
161 
185 
213 
235 
253 
283 
311 


ERECT RES 


ON THE 


EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


16 
GOD. 


S there a God? It is common to assume that 

there is. And, truly, “the heavens declare God’s 
glory, and the firmament showeth his handiwork.” 
Moreover, the doctrine of the one living and true 
God, Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor of the uni- 
verse, as it solves so many problems, resolves so 
many doubts, banishes so many fears, inspires so 
many hopes, gives such sublimity to all things, and 
such spring to all noble powers, we might presume 
would, as soon as it was announced, be received by 
every healthy human mind. 

As it requires mind to read upon the face of the 
universe the marks of the Infinite Intelligence—for 
“the fool hath said in his heart, There is no God”— 
so it requires active and educated moral perception to 
see, in the constitution of things, the course of prov- 


idence, the evidence that the Creator is just and true. 
I 


2 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


To the true moral philosopher, it is as clear that the 
world is actually arranged on the principle of favoring 
virtue and punishing vice, as that it is adapted to all 
the faculties of man as an intelligent, moral, and re- 
ligious being. “ Wherever the dictates of the moral 
sentiments, properly illuminated by the knowledge of 
science and of moral and of religious duty, are op- 
posed by the solicitations of the animal propensities, 
the latter must yield; otherwise, by the constitution 
of external nature, evil will inevitably ensue.” 
Although there are difficulties in it, yet the diffi- 
culties of believing it are far less than those of deny- 
ing it. For example: either something must have 
existed from eternity, or something must have created 
itself. The first involves the difficulty of mystery, 
the second that of absurdity. 
' But though nature is written all over with lessons 
concerning God, it is like a dark cavern written over 
with hieroglyphics. It needs the lamp of revelation to 
make the letters visible, and the voice of the prophet 
to translate the characters into living thought. Even 
when this is done, the truth may be resisted; for the 
human mind is unhealthy, is depraved. This is as 
clear from reason as from revelation. Hence, even in 
Christian lands, there is much practical atheism. 
When a man to-day thinks and acts so that, if to- 
morrow atheism could be demonstrated as a problem 
in Euclid, he would have no occasion to change his 
course, for him it is as if there was no God. Where 
there is so much practical atheism, there must needs 
be more or less theoretical. Indeed, many things in 
the present age promote it. The cultivation of the 


GOD. >, 


natural sciences, which should lead every devout. mind 
to the adoration of the Creator, seems to lead the 
undevout to atheism. 
“ God himself with some 

Is apprehended as the bare result 

Of what his hand materially has made, 

Expressed in such an algebraic sign, 

Called God; that is, to put it otherwise, 


They add up nature to a naught of God, 
And cross the quotient.” 


“An undevout astronomer,’ says another poet, “is 
mad.” Yet how many, while walking among the 
stars, are troubled with atheistic doubts—struggling 
to conceive a mind mighty enough to swing those 
unnumbered worlds on high, or to understand why 
such an one should condescend to man! Daniel 
Webster, though he tells us that “his heart has al- 
ways assured and reassured him that the whole Gospel 
of Jesus Christ must be true,” yet says, “ Philosophical 
argument, especially that drawn from the vastness of 
the universe in comparison with the apparent insig- 
nificance of this globe, has sometimes shaken my 
reason for the faith that is in me.” 

The psychology of the day, too, is atheistic. I re- 
fer to Compte’s, adopted by Herbert Spencer, now 
spreading on both sides of the channel, and even over 
seas; a system which would stop the mind at mere 
phenomena, and sneer at any thing beyond as super- 
stition. 

History, too, is constructed upon the same prin- 
ciple by Buckle. Thus scientific men, running along 
the line of material causes, being strangely and vol- 
untarily entangled in them, rise to nothing higher. 


4 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


They say z is caused by y, and y by 2, etc., not con- 
sidering that between every cause and its effect there 
is a question, Why is it that z zs caused by y? or 
y by x? what established the connection between 
them ?—or that there is a question at the end of our 
ultimate discovery, What is it that originates a, the 
first of the series? Grant, for instance, that human 
life is a line of antecedents and consequents, who 
established the first antecedent ? 

In such a condition of scientific mind, it is not at 
all surprising that atheism, though generally con- 
cealed, is sometimes boldly avowed. Some time 
since (1856) the Manchester Guardian, an English 
secular paper, contained the following, from a French 
correspondent : 

“What think you of there being in France a set 
of men who, in the nineteenth century, improving 
upon their predecessors of the great Revolution, would 
put the existence of the Supreme Being to vote? Yet 
here is what passed but a few days ago. Prince 
Napoleon, wishing to draw about him the notabilities 
of the freethinking and republican coterie, gave a 
dinner at the Freres Provenceaux to seven persons, 
among whom were Madame George Sand, Merimie, 
and Proudhon, the famous inventor of the formula, 
‘All pr:perty is theft.’ During dinner a vast deal of 
discussion upon religious and philosophical doctrines 
took place, and a wonderful deal of atheistic non- 
sense was expended, without, as you may conceive, 
any conclusion being attained. At last one of the 
guests proposed that the opinions of the seven per- 
sons present should be taken, by vote, on the plain 


- 


GOD. 5 


question, ‘Is there a God? The impiety was actually 
committed. Seven little rolls of paper were deposited 
in a hat, after each guest had written down ‘yes,’ or 
‘no,’ upon the inside. Six noes came out; the seventh 
was a blank.” 

There is a school headed by such men as Burnouf, 
in France, which teaches that, through Christianity, 
Europe has been wzfortunately diverted from Japhetic 
ideas, instincts, and traditions, to Semitic ones, and 
that it should retrace its steps; in other words, 
that it should abandon the idea of the Divine unity, 
and become polytheistic. Like Julian or Marcus 
Aurelius, it would carry us back to the Roman and 
Grecian heathenism. 

But it is not only in France that such opinions are 
held. The London Spectator, in a recent issue, says 
“that in Protestant countries irreligion tends to indif- 
erentism—even to a tone of mind lower than that, in 
which the supernatural is neither loved, feared, hated, 
nor discussed, but simply ignored; while in Catholic 
countries it is fast becoming a fanaticism, as fierce’ 
and propagandist as that of any creed has ever been, 
threatening to overthrow all institutions claiming to 
be Divine, and to organize a new and atheistic world. 
As a proof of this, a majority of the Austrian Legis- 
lature (Reichsrath) have proclaimed themselves ma- 
terialists, and are bent on compelling the Church to 
give up all claim to interfere in human affairs. A 
similar state of things prevails in Italy.” 

But we need not go so far for daring atheism. 
The United States Infidel Convention, held in New 
York in 1863, repudiated the idea of God. One of 


6 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


its members, Dr. Shroeder, said, “ So long as man be- 
lieves in God, he is not free.” One of the resolutions 
of the body declares “that not all other causes com- 
bined do so much to prevent and destroy the happi- 
ness of men as the notions about God,” etc. Another 
declares that requiring the devotion and energies of 
man to the services of the presumed Almighty Intel 


ligence, who, if he existed, could not need man’s. 


services, tends to pervert his feelings, to fetter his 
intellect, to divert him from his duties to his fellow- 


men, and ought to be discarded as an so to the . 


welfare and happiness of man. 

Even in some of the Christian pulpits of the land 
we hear of an impersonal God, who is adorned with 
many poetic fancies, and clothed with infinite space, 
eternal duration, and irresistible power, but of whom 
reason, memory, judgment, will, consciousness, as all 
belonging to person, are denied. It is easy to see 
that man, with all his errors and infirmities, is 
superior to such a Supreme. What are the leaders 
of the Free Religious Society but atheists? One 
says God is the soul of things; another that he not 
only has no religion, but no place to put any in. 

Under these circumstances, it is needful to call 
attention to the great doctrine which lies at the 
foundation of all religion. It is not our intention to 
argue at length in its favor, but to notice some of the 


atheistic theories of the time. Previously, however, 


we may glance at the positive argument. By some 
the idea of a Creator is deemed intuitive; that is, 
that when the mind is developed and exercised, it 
obtains spontaneously this idea, as the eye, which 


GOD. 7 


was made to see, but which can not see until it is 
opened and brought in contact with light, as soon as 
it is exercised, under proper conditions, has vision ; 
and this is confirmed by the fact that all nations and 
ages have believed in God or gods, have attributed to 
them personality and intelligence, and have ascribed 
creation to their agency. No wonder: we have causal 
power in ourselves; we stretch forth the hand, and 
results which we intended are accomplished. From 
~ this power in ourselves, how natural to infer like 
power in God; and from the changes wrought by 
our own power, how natural to infer creation by 
Divine power! The evidences of design on every 
hand imply the existence of an intelligent Creator. 
La Place, the great astronomer, declared that the 
proof in favor of an intelligent God as the Author of 
creation stood as infinity to unity against any other 
hypothesis of ultimate causation, and that it was 
' infinitely more probable that a set of writing imple- 
ments thrown promiscuously upon parchment would 
produce such a composition as Homer’s “ Iliad,” than 
that creation was originated by any other cause than 
that referred to. 

God must be a free, self-conscious, moral Being. 
A cause must be adequate to its effect, and hence 
must comprehend the effect. An inferior work may 
be produced by a great artist, simply because he 
does not put forth all his power. But how can a 
work be produced by a cause which is inferior to 
itself? He that formed the eye, shall he not see? 
He that formed the ear, shall he not hear? He 
that gave man knowledge, shall he not know? He 


8 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


who made man personal, self-conscious, possessed of 
self-determination and moral character, shall he not 
be himself possessed of these attributes? I see not 
how this simple argument can be resisted without 
denying intuitive principles or first truths. Every 
man is compelled to act, as a general rule, upon the 
report of his senses, the testimony of his conscious- 
ness, and upon those first truths which lie at the 
foundation of all reasoning. Admitting that the 
world is a reality, that every effect must have a 


cause, our intuitions are reliable, the argument for 


God is irresistible. Atheists, who reject the doc- 
trine of God, either denying the existence of matter, 
or materialists, denying the existence of mind, or 
skeptics denying the existence of either, hence are 
termed fools, because they forsake common sense. It 
may be said that this argument does not prove the 
unity of God, and this supposition is strengthened 
by the fact that, among unenlightened nations, we 
find gods many and lords many. Even among 
philosophical pagans we find, with a few splendid ex- 
ceptions, either dualism, or pantheism, rarely theism. 
Even in Christian lands, where men disregard the 
Bible, they often become blind as pagans. What 
greater mind has America produced than Franklin ? 
Although he died with his eye upon the Cross, yet 
when in youth, disregarding the Word and relying 
upon reason, he became a polytheist. He says: “I 
conceive that the Infinite has created many beings 
or gods. It may be that these gods are immortal, 
or it may be that, after many ages, they are changed 
and others supply their places. Howbeit, I conceive 


’ 
a 


GOD. . 9 


that each of these is exeeeding wise and good and 
very powerful, and that each has made for himself 
one sun, attended by a beautiful system of planets. 
It is that particular wise and good God that is the 
Author and Owner of our system, that I propose 
as the object of my praise and adoration.” This is 
the pagan doctrine. Pagans have a conception of 
an Infinite One, yet, deeming him beyond their 
thoughts, they erect no altars, and offer no devotions 
to him. I think, however, the unity of God would 
be clear from nature but for human perversity ; for it 
is a plain principle that we are not to attribute to 
many causes what can be accounted for by one. 
Because fifty plants are growing in the garden, it is 
not necessary to suppose fifty gardeners. Because 
fifty articles have been stolen from the house, we are 
not to suppose fifty thieves. Where one agent is 
adequate to produce multiplied effects, and especially 
if these are interlaced and co-working to the same 
end, it is unreasonable to suppose more than one. 
Moreover, if we were to admit the existence of in- 
ferior gods by whom the worlds were made, we should 
not escape the necessity of rising from them to the 
Infinite and Eternal One—the great First Cause. 
Polytheism does but practically, not logically, ex- 
clude Him. 

There are three atheistic theories at the present 
day in the Christian world; namely: 1. Creation by- 
the parturitive powers of the earth; 2. By develop- 
ment; 3. Pantheism. | 

A. few words on each, in the order named. That 
a blind, unintelligent force, residing in matter, could 


10 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


swing these orbs on high, and sphere and light and 
warm and order them in harmony; could select 
from their rocks the necessary elements, and no 
others, and in the right proportions; could organize 
these into vegetables and animals, and then animate 
and endow them—is to me unthinkable. Whence 
this calculated order, this exclusion of chance and 
confusion, these constant and regular modes of 
action? 

a. How can matter bring forth from its bosom 
that which it does not possess—thought, wisdom, 
goodness, soul? How can darkness transform itself 
into light; or death into life; or mute, cold, sense- 
less granite, by successive changes, rise up living, 
conscious, moral man? How can you have the re- 
flection of a fire without a flame? 

6. As every force we know is finite, no one of 
them is creative. Combine all these forces, yet no 
accumulation of the finite can produce the infinite. 
All forces that we know are limited by other forces 
You may put them together, but no accumulation of 
limited forces can produce a limiting and illimitable 
one. Yet the universe demands an infinite and 
illimitable force. 

c. The atheistic doctrine teaches that attraction 
and repulsion, antagonistic forces, equal in power, per- 
vade all space, and move all bodies ; but where equal 
is to equal, the result will be equal. Here, then, 
the motions of the material universe are accounted 
for by two antagonistic forces of equal . strength, 
which by an axiom of mathematics should produce 
equilibrium or rest. If it be asserted that one of 


GOD. II 


these forces is naturally stronger than the other, 
then it must remain so forever, and either by draw- 
ing all matter into one mass, or by separating all 
particles into space, according as the one or the 
other was the stronger, would thus produce ever- 
lasting rest. Yet every thing, from the sun to the 
mote, is in perpetual and rapid motion. What power 
is ever counterworking these forces, which tend to 
bring the universe to rest? It is not in matter, 
since it controls the motions and neutralizes the 
tendencies of its laws. It is superior to Jit, con- 
stantly acting upon it, overcoming it. It is God. 

@. If the parturitive powers of nature, or in- 
herent natural law, produced the creation, it must 
have wrought from eternity ; and on this supposition 
things would long ere this have attained to perfec- 
tion. But every thing indicates that the creation not 
only occurred in time, but in recent time; for nothing 
is mature. Art, science, letters, agriculture, are in 


‘their infancy. Hence, creation must have been from 


a cause outside of nature. 

e. If creation depended on inherent laws, all 
changes it exhibits would be produced by such laws. 
These laws, too, would operate uniformly. But we 
find events produced by a force moving athwart 
them, and breaking up one order to establish an- 
other. The glacial period must have destroyed all 
animal life. Must not the restoration have been by 
a power above nature? 

Jf. The facts of man’s moral and spiritual nature 
can not be accounted for on this hypothesis ; we are 


conscigus that we are free, moral, accountable beings. 
2 


I2 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


g. Even if it could be shown that the universe 
has always existed as it is, we should be compelled 
to believe in a coexisting and sustaining, if not crea- 
tive, God. 

But let us admit that nature, by its own inherent 
force, produced the universe, and reason upon the 
supposition,—what follows ? 

Nature is a great architect. How insignificant all 
others in comparison ! 

It is also a great astronomer; for, out far as the 
eye or the telescope can reach, the laws of Kepler 
and of Newton are found, bringing the worlds above 
to their appointed stations with the regularity of 
clock-work. No chronometer like that of the skies. 

Nature is a great chemist; for throughout the 
world the law of definite proportions prevails, and 
every atom is weighed and labeled, as by the hand 
of the manufacturer. 

It is a great physiologist; for no animal comes 
into existence all trunk or all extremities, all brain 
or all heart; but each has organs of life, of motion, 
of sense; and each organ has its proper place and 
relations. 

It must be a great psychologist; for every man 
comes into existence with a well-constituted mind. 
No man is all will, or intellect, or passion; but each 
is in himself a perfectly constituted government, hav- 
ing reason to legislate for him, conscience to judge, 
passion to impel, will to execute. 

It must be a great conservator. The atmosphere 
consists of three elements, not chemically united, but 
mechanically mixed. Although there are multiplied 


GOD. 13 


causes of disturbance between the proportions of 
these ingredients—for every lung and every fire has 
a tendency to diminish the quantity of oxygen and 
increase that of the carbon, and every living leaf 
throws out oxygen by day and carbonic acid by 
night—yet if you take a receiver of air anywhere, 
on continent or island, on sea or land, on mountain- 
top or valley, in the desert waste or in the city full, 
you will find, on analysis, that it will yield the 
same elements in the same proportions. So, too, 
the water. . 

The sexes also are properly balanced. In no 
island do we find all the children either males or 
females. No two human countenances are alike; no 
two animals or vegetables. Were it otherwise, the 
social relations and the rights of property would be 
disturbed. 

Nature is a great moralist; for-in all ages and 
nations men are prosperous and happy in proportion 
as they keep the Ten Commandments. It is even a 
religionist ; for every-where, and in all ages, men 
have temples, priests, sacrifices, prayers. They act 
as though God regulates the world and interferes for 
his praying children. He only is the truly contented 
man, living or dying, who is truly religious. 

If nature brought us into this world without ask- 
ing our consent, it may take us, by the same liberty, 
into another; if it respects moral and religious con- 
siderations /ere, it may there; if it makes this world 
ook and feel like a state of probation, it may carry 
forward its own system, and make the next look 
and feel like a state of retribution. Indeed, nature 


a 


14 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


is only another name for God; and we delude our- 
selves if we think to get rid of God by calling him 
Nature. A mere abstraction can not build even a 
hat-box. Nor will it relieve the case to put necessity 
in place of nature. As Butler shows, the question 
between him who believes in freedom and him who 
teaches necessity, is not whether the universe was 
made without an agent, but whether the agent acted 
freely or by necessity. He compares the case with 
the controversy in regard to the origin of.a house. 
Both parties agree that it was built by a man; but 
one party contends that, in building it, he acted 
freely ; the other, that he acted from necessity. 

Still, God, upon either the naturalistic or fatal- 
istic hypothesis, is little more than a synonym for 
natural law; the dynamics of the universe; the 
inscrutable, all-pervading, all-subduing power with 
which we play the game of life. We need more: 
even that Divine Mind, which, like a sun, shines over 
both worlds, teaching the moral freedom of this and 
the moral justice of the next. 

The next theory teaches that creation is a devel- 
opment from a single beginning, by force of its 
own inherent law. This does not dispense with the 
necessity of God, who must have given creation 
this start. The primordial cell, from which animated 
creation is slowly evolved by progressive mutations, 
must have possessed the vital properties, powers, 
instincts, and reason of the whole of living nature, 
including man’s rational and immortal soul. If crea-_ 
tive power is brought in to account for any addition, 
the whole theory falls. Either through the whole 


GOD. 15 


series man’s immortal soul must have been dragged, 
or it must have been added by creative power. Upon 
the supposition of its development, we might sup- 
pose that animals, in proportion as they approach man 
in animal organization, would- exhibit the dawnings 
of reason. But while we find instinct, the opposite 
of reason, we do not find rationality. Nor even 
do we find instinct improved as the organization 
approaches the human; for the bee has more in- 
stinct than the gorilla. But the supposition of this 
microscopic cell being a Noah’s ark, in which all be- 
ings, clean and _ unclean, winged, finny, and footed, 
of pre-adamite and post-adamite times, should be de- 
posited, breaks down under its weight of absurdity. 

It not only can not be proved, but can be dis- 
proved. Although there may be great varieties of 
the same species, there is no transmutation of species, 

But, waiving the refutation, let us examine the 
reasoning. A professor, having drawn upon the 
blackboard the skeleton of a fish, and by its side 
that of a man, points out the resemblance between 
them. Beginning at the pectoral-fin, “This,” says he, 
“corresponds to the scapula, this to the humerus, 
this to the radius, these to the phalanges, these to 
the fingers.” Then, passing to the ventral-fin, he 
proceeds: “This corresponds to the femora, this to 
the tibula, this to the fibula, this to the os calcis,’ and 
so on, until he has shown the resemblance of the fish 
to the man, from the crown of his head to the sole 
of his foot. He proceeds to show that similar resem- 
blances exist throughout all nature. Hence he ex- 
claims: “ How inexplicable the similar pattern of the 


160 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


~ 


hand of a man, the foot of a dog, the wing of a bat, 
the flipper of a seal, on the doctrine of independent 
acts of creation! how simply explained on the princi- 
ple of natural selection, of successive slight variations 
in the diverging descendants of a single progenitor x 
To this we demur, believing it more reasonable to 
suppose that these different species are the results of 
different creative acts. There is a conclusion to which 
these resemblances legitimately lead; namely, that 
the different orders of animated being, all bearing re- 
semblances more remarkable in proportion as they 
are studied, are the workmanship of the same hand, 
as we infer from certain characteristics in a series of 
books that they are from the same pen. To infer 
that the superior works are developments of the in- 
ferior, is as wild as to infer that “ Paradise Lost” was 
not written by Milton, but gradually developed from 
one of his smaller poems. 

Moreover, may we not argue from man to the 
radiate, as plausibly as from the radiate to man? 
Why not suppose the fish a degenerated man, as 
reasonably as the man a developed fish? May we 
not reason downward as well as upward? Do you 
argue from natural selection? So will we. We find 
that, at the outset; and very strange selections, too. 
Do you argue from circumstances? Well. Here 
is a poor, miserable, ignorant man, placed in the 
meanest society, or forced, it may be, into the 
wilderness, having as much communion with the 
beasts as with man, soon constrained to emigrate to 
Africa, and dwell in huts on the coast of Guinea. 
Wat shall prevent him from getting a feeble mind, 


GOD. 17 


tame spirit, dark skin, receding forehead, and curly 
hair? May not his son be more like a negro than 
himself, and his remote descendants, in a few genera- 
tions, be pure negroes? Then, placed in circum- 
stances less and less favorable, nourished by wolves, 
for example, may they not grow less and less human, 
until they become gorillas, and so on, through innu- 
merable generations (for we are allowed as many as 
we need for the purpose), become fishes ? 

But the chief argument for the development hy- 
pothesis is founded on appetences, desires, etc. An 
animated globule gets hungry and wants a mouth, 
and dies with a pucker at one end; but its offspring 
has a little more of a want, and dies with a little 
more of a pucker; and finally, after a long line of 
generations, its remote descendants get a mouth. 
And now, taking in food, it becomes uneasy about 
the epigastric region, and wants a-stomach, which in 
like manner, after some millenniums, comes for the 
craving, and then gradually lengthens itself for pur- 
poses not necessary to describe. In due time the 
creature gets dyspeptic, pines for a gastric juice, 
etc., until it comes to be quite a respectable animal. 
But finding that other animated globules have got 
the start of it, or, having had more hunger, have de- 
veloped larger mouths, and are pursuing it to satiate 
their own appetite, it feels the want of a shell to pro- 
tect its soft parts; and so this want stiffens the 
perspiration caused by fear into a skin, though not 
thick enough to save it. As it is swallowed, however, 
it has the consolation that its offspring, inheriting its 


d? 
dying distresses, will have a thicker one, and so on, 


18 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


until, after millions of generations, its order will be- 
come pretty well fortified. 

When the shell-fish get up to pike or pickerel, it 
is easy to imagine that some of them, growing tired 
of the water, may aspire to the land, and this aspira- 
tion may develop incipient legs. Finding their food 
on the trees, they may want arms and hands; and, 
propagating this uneasiness, they may finally get 
them. Finding a tail convenient to help them from 
branch to branch, they may, at length, acquire a 
caudal appendage. Some, going into the more open 
country, may take a fancy to walk upright ; and, get- 
ting ashamed of their tails on the plains, may shrink 
them gradually to nothing. It may take ten thousand 
- years to do it, but what of that? Thus they become 
men ; for, according to this theory, the difference be- 
tween the man and the monkey is this: Man is a 
double-tube with four extremities, and the monkey a 
double-tube with five. 

Now, why may not the process be reversed? 
Many men are whimsical. Here is one who has a 
fondness for foxes. He admires their character, 
studies their habits, imitates their ways,—so much so 
that his friends say “he zs fory.” His attitudes, his 
walk, his looks, his practices, all resemble those of 
the fox; and whenever we see him, either in the 
world or the church, we are reminded of this Scrip- 
ture, “Go tell that fox.” It is easy to see that his 
son may be more of a fox than the father, the grand- 
son than the son; and so, after centuries or zons or 
millenniums, if you please, a real fox may be pro- 
duced. Another man has many of the propensities, 


_ GOD. 19 


tastes, wants, and movements of the monkey; he 
has monkey attitudes, and monkey pranks. His son 
may be still more of monkey, and so on, until, in 
a far-distant future, he comes out, in a remote de- 
scendant, a genuine monkey, caudal appendage ang 
all. . Another man is “a snake in the grass.” He 
crawls rather than walks, stings rather than talks ; 
the poison of asps is under his tongue; he delights 
in concealment; he never does any thing directly 
that he can do indirectly. He has no sense of grati- 
tude, but will bite the bosom that warms and protects 
him. Suppose his feelings, strengthened in his pos- 
terity from generation to generation, until they be- 
come a generation of vipers—a nest of copperheads. 

It may be said, as an objection to the theory of 
degeneration, that we see no example of the chang- 
ing of one species of. animal into an inferior species ; 
but the same objection holds to the theory of devel- 
opment, for, according to this, it would seem that 
the universe is a great university, in which the 
fishes are freshmen, the birds sophomores, the mon- 
keys juniors, and men seniors; but that, on com- 
mencement-day, when man graduated, some calamity 
fell upon the under-graduates, by which they were 
fixed 27 statu quo. 

The philosophical arguments for the one being as 
good as those for the other, we see many reasons for 
preferring the former. It is unreasonable to suppose 
that all the capacities, susceptibilities, and aspirations 
of man should be possessed by the oyster. Yet this 
is implied in the development hypothesis, for how 


could that be developed from the oyster that never 
3 


{ 
20 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


was in it? On the other hand, we know that all the 
appetites, propensities, and capabilities of the whole 
animal creation are possessed by man. He is the 
microcosm. Then, it is a good deal more to our 
credit to suppose that man has produced the whole 
inferior creation, than that the beasts have generated 
him. If we must choose between the two supposi- 
tions, let man be deemed the father of the monkey, 
rather than the monkey the father of us; for we may 
be allowed to chastise the degenerate son, but we 
are bound to pay respect even to the stwpzd grand- 
father. : 

The genealogy of common sense corresponds with 
that of the Scripture, closing with the sublime line, 
“Which was the son of Adam, which was the Son 
of God.” Grant the theory, it does not exclude the 
idea of God; nor would his power be less displayed 
in evolving creation in the course of unnumbered 
centuries in an infinite series from a single animated 
point, than in producing it at once out of nothing, 
or by successive creative acts, though it is practically 
atheistic. \Ne may say of Darwin what Pascal says 
of another: “I can not pardon. Descartes ; he would 
like, in all his philosophy, to dispense with God ; but 
he has not been able to escape according him a 
fillip to put the world in motion; after that, he has 
nothing to do with God.” 

The doctrine of development, plausible as it is, is 
without foundation, and is repudiated by the best au- 
thorities. Cuvier, Owen, Barraud, Falconer, Forbes, 
Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, Agassiz, etc., are all 
against it. 


GOD. 21 


‘Dr. Hitchcock affirms that, “We may set it down 
as one of the established facts in paleontology, that 
the earth has several times changed its inhabitants— 
as many as six times at least—so entirely, that, with 
the exception of the tertiary and the alluvial, not a 
species 1s common to two adjoining groups, and as 
many as twenty-five times have the faunas and floras 
been so distinct as to prove their origin totally dis- 
tinct.” Dana says, “At the close of long periods 
and epochs, there were nearly universal extinctions, 
followed by new creations.” Agassiz says: “ Nothing 
furnishes the slightest argument in favor of the muta- 
bility of the species. On the contrary, every modern’ 
investigation has only gone to confirm the results 
first obtained by Cuvier, that species are fixed.” 

Pantheism is, in general, God is all, and all is God; 
but it has many forms. Plutarch speaks of an enter- 
tainment which Pompey’s host of Epirus gave him. 
There were many dishes, and they had a seeming 
variety ; but, when examined, they all proved to have 
been made out of one hog. As the different doctors, 
water and steam and regular, all bring their patients 
ultimately to the grave, so the different pantheisms 
all bring us to eternal darkness. The Hindoo phi- 
losophy is idealistic. It teaches that the forms of 
matter are but shadows ; that mind alone has essence, 
and God alone has mind; that individual souls are 
but emanations from him, which at death fall back 
into him. Thus taught, also, much of the philosophy 
of Greece. Buddhistic philosophy is apparently the 
reverse of this. It makes God nothing, man every 
thing. In the one, man is absorbed into God; in the 


22 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


other, he is developed into God; but when narrowly 
examined, they seem to have a common root. Both 
believe in the three worlds—the world of men, of the 
gods, and of absolute being. Both were incapable 
of comprehending the last. Yet both regarded it as 
the substance of all the rest. With both, the universe 
is but a manifestation of God. As the waves rise 
from the sea and fall into it, so being rises out of and 
falls into the Almighty. Both teach that, though 
independent and eternal, he is without attributes. 
He is called nothing, because he is unknown and 
unknowable. Perhaps latent heat will best convey 
their conception of him, and of the eternal state. 
They differed chiefly in this: Brahmanism devoted 
itself to meditation upon the infinite and the eternal ; 
Buddhism considered oz/y the finite and the temporal, 
particularly soul, and its laws. 

The great problem of the age has been to unite 
the finite and the infinite, and present each to the 
mind as a reality. Christianity alone perfectly solves 
it. The doctrine of European pantheism is, that God 
is the common principle which combines the infinite 
variety of the world, and constitutes it one. It is 
the common stream of life that animates living na- 
ture, or the objective reason which shapes all things. 
This is not a personal God, and has no existence 
independent of the world. This doctrine prevailed in 
some of the ancient states. It has been revived by 
Spinoza, in modern times, and taught by many mod- 
ern philosophers. Spinoza calls God “the foundation 
of all that exists, the one eternal substance, which 
makes its actual appearance in the double world of 


GOD. 23 


thought and of matter.” Schilling defines God “the 
life which moves in the tree and the forest, in the 
sea and the crystal, which works and creates in the 
mighty forces and powers of natural life, and which, 
inclosed in a human body, produces the thoughts of 
the mind.” Hegel defines God “the process of the 
mind. Man’s thought of God is the existence of 
God. He exists only in us. God does not know of 
himself; it is we who know of him. While man 
thinks of and knows God, God knows and thinks of 
himself, and exists. God is the truth of man, and 
man is the reality of God.” This blasphemy is only 
pushing the difficulty a step back ; for this foundation, 
this stream of life, this objective, must have’a cause. 
This doctrine in every form cuts up morality by the 
roots. Evil is as necessary as good, and has the 
same source; both are the manifestations of God. If 
so, man’s consciousness is unreliable. Man is not 
responsible, God is not moral, the universe is con- 
structed on a lie. 

Moreover, it is supremely absurd, since it talks of 
the absolute and infinite Being, yet denies that he 
has any existence but in the finite. 

The heart, no less than the intellect, shrinks from 
pantheism. We want a personal, loving God, not only 
Creator, Benefactor, ‘Preserver, but Father—Father 
of mercies and of men, whose name not only the 
hills and the valleys bless, but the Church and the 
heavens also. 

I close with a few. practical suggestions : 

I. Think not meanly of the soul. On the princi- 
| ple of atheism, nothing is higher than man. On the 


24 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


principle of theism, there is a standard of knowledge, 
beauty, goodness, toward which we may aspire and 
ascend forever. The central precept of the one is, 
“Tet us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ;” that of 
the other, “Take no thought for raiment or for life, but 
seek for glory, immortality, endless progress.” 

2. Think not meanly of the universe, as though it 
were an illusion or a series of antecedents and conse- 
quents, without an author, a regulator, or an end, in- 
stead of a sublime and deep reality ; a theater for the 
progressive display of the Divine attributes, and for 
the education of moral beings, too vast to be com- 
prehended, yet over and through all whose mysteries 
will ever sound the anthem: “Great and marvelous 
are thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true 
are thy ways, thou King of saints.” 

3. Let the idea of God be cherished until it be- 
comes the chief one of the soul, the center of its 
affections, the source of its joys, the foundation of its 
hopes, the circumference of its knowledge. Let it be 
the first article of our creed, on which all others de- 
pend, and which, though all others be given up, must 
remain. Whatever else we may doubt, let us never 
look up into this universe to call in question its pre- 
siding Mind. 

4. Let us contemplate God as every- ast present. 
As his laws are every-where, and as it is power, not 
law, which works, and as no being can act where he 
does not exist, so God exists every-where. The laws 
of the universe are the tracks of his chariot wheels, 
and their rumbling marks his everlasting goings. He 
is so observant of his works that not a sparrow falls 


GOD. 25 


to the ground without his notice. More particularly is 
he observant of man; he marks our paths, persons, 
and purposes. While Lafayette was in the castle of 
Olmutz, it is said that he never looked through the 
key-hole of his dungeon without meeting the eye of 
a sentinel looking upon him. Can we look, even 
through the window of our hearts, without meeting 
the all-seeing Eye? 

Are not earth and heaven a polished mirror, reflect- 
ing all things to his sight? Nay, are they not a sen- 
sitive plate, photographing all things for final judg- 
ment? It is a doctrine of philosophy that every event 
makes a permanent impression upon the surface on 
which its shadow is cast. | 

- Every room, for example, receives and retains the 
shadows which fall upon it. All that we need to 
make it a permanent history of its inhabitants is 
something, as in the art of photography, to make the 
shadow visible. God has that something, and can 
make the globe itself the permanent docket of all 
human crime, at once the evidence and judgment of 
the last day. Whether this be or not, all, all is writ- 
ten upon the retina-of his own eye. Let us acquaint 
ourselves with God. He can not only be approached, 
but felt, by the soul of the good man. This is the 
doctrine of philosophy of the ages. All priesthood, 
all adoration, all prayer proceeds upon it. 

Bees and other insects are provided with antenne, 
delicate organs of touch, by which they converse with 
one another, and communicate their desires and wants. 
A strong hive will contain three thousand six hundred 
workers, each of which, in order to be assured of 


26 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


the presence of its queen, touches her every day with 
its antennz. Should the queen die, or be removed, 
the whole colony disperse themselves, and are seen in 
the hive no more; quitting all the stores of honey, 
which they have labored to collect for themselves and 
for the larvee, and perishing every one. On the con- 
trary, should the queen be put in a wire cage, at the 
bottom of a hive, so that her subjects may but feel and 
feed her, they are contented, and the business of the 
hive proceeds. Thus with a Church. Let them feel 
not their Sovereign, and these ceremonies and songs 
are useless; their bands are broken, their souls per- 
ish ; let them but touch him daily, and they can live 
and love and labor on, even in the fire. 


‘Should fate command me to the farthest verge 
Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, 
Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun 
Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beams 
Flame on the Atlantic isles,—’t is nought to me, 
Since God is ever present, ever felt, 

In the void waste, as in the city full; 
And where he vital breathes, there must be joy.” 


O, to have the soul bathed all day long in this 
thought, “as the pebble in the willow brook,” until the 
words come like the tears, because the heart is full, 
and we can not help it; to feel, in the darkest hour, 
that there is an unseen Spectator, whose eyes rest on 


us like morning on the flowers; and that, in the > 


severest sorrow, we can sink into a presence full of 
love and sympathy, deeper than ever breathed from 
earth or sky or loving hearts—a presence in which 
“all fears and anxieties melt away, as ice-crystals ir 
the warm ocean!” This is heaven. 

“Tl praise my Maker while I’ve breath.” 


7 


| 


GOD. 27 


5. Let us properly prize that inestimable word of 
God which gives us this faith. 

If, placed at the bar of the last judgment, I were 
assured that the Bible is untrue, I should have a 
good apology for having received it. 

I clasped it to my heart, because, O, Father, it only 
gave just conceptions of thee. Paganism pointed me 
to beasts and reptiles ;; Mohammedism, to an arbitrary 
judge, a cruel, and lascivious prophet, and a carnal 
paradise ; philosophy was confused, differing as to thy 
character and claims, throwing doubts over thine ex- 
istence, or confounding thee with thy works; nature’s 
teachings are unintelligible, for amid all her bright 
suns, she casts shadows on the sinful and sorrow- 
stricken soul, while she kindles no light in that dark 
valley to which she leads her children. 

The Gospel led us through clouds by Galilean 
shores, and, in the form of Jesus Christ, enabled us to 
see thee, as our Father, bending over his creatures 
with a heart of love, and on the mount of redeeming 
mercy—providing for them pardon, purification, and a 
home in heaven. I could not see how the true and 
saving knowledge of the Holy One should be circum- 
scribed by the Bible, if it were not a Divine light. 


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if. 
SPIRITUALITY. 


HE conditions of our nature incline us to mate- 

rialism. There may be embodied spirits whose 
corporeal framework is so ethereal and whose pur- 
suits are so spiritual that they may not be con- 
scious of their material organs; but man, subjected 
to incessant calls by the wants of his decaying 
body, absorbed in secular pursuits, and consumed 
with, worldly anxieties, is in danger of passing life 
without reflecting that he is a soul. When we con-: 
sider that the tendency of our philosophy concurs 
with that of our nature and condition, we can but 
think that materialism would be generally prevalent 
were it not for the counteracting influence of our 
religious belief. It is more general than many sup- 
pose. The gainsayers are upon us in swarms; not 
merely the vulgar, but the refined. The eminent 
English physiologist, Dr. Lawrence, says that the 
notion of an immaterial soul is opposed to the evi- 
dence of anatomy and physiology. French physiol- 
ogists generally take the same view. Dr. Elliottson, 
a high living authority, and a believer in the Chris- 
tian Scriptures, declares that the doctrine of mind 
independently of matter, indicates a want of modern 
knowledge, and involves us in endless absurdities; 

29 


30 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


that God can not create beings irrespective of matter, 
and that those who believe in the existence of the 
soul “are usually rank, malicious hypocrites and 
Pharisees.” The Epicurean doctrine, put to rest in 
the early ages by the prevalence of Christianity, has 
been revived in modern times by Spinoza, and put 
into philosophic form alike in Germany, France, 
and England. Moleschott, in his “Cycle of Life,” 
teaches that “the same carbon and nitrogen which 
the plants derive from carbonic acid, humic acid, 
and ammonia, becomes successively grass, wheat, 
beast, and man, to be again resolved into humic 
acid and ammonia.” Feuerbach declares that the 
soul is but “the sum total of nervous processes ”»— 
“a dust-heap, to be dispersed as it was swept to- 
gether.” 

Many who adopt the creed of these gentlemen are 
restrained by prudential considerations from profess- 
ing it, while thousands admit their premises without 
perceiving the conclusions which logically follow. It 
is the fashion to cast science and literature in a 
material mold. Nor is even theology an exception. 
There is a religious sect which, like the ancient 
Sadducees, earnestly argues against the spirituality 
of man. Matter is becoming the idol in the tem- 
ple of modern thought. It may not be improper, 
therefore, to glance at the old controversy concerning 
matter and mind, in an age so prone to forget the 
distinction between them. 

Modern materialists usually state their conclusion 
as an induction obtained in the following mode: 
Begin at the zdphite, where life is scarce sus- 


SPIRITUALITY. kia a 


pected but by the naturalist, and advance upward,. 
through fishes, reptiles, birds, quadrupeds, and quad- 
rumana to man, and as the organization becomes 
more perfect, the zutelligence does also; so that it 
would seem that the enlargement of the encephalic 
mass is the enlargement of the spiritual power. 
Every species presents a great variety of animal 
organization, with corresponding variety of spiritual 
power. Take man, for example. As you pass by 
the Ethiopian, Malay, American, Mongolian, and 
Caucasian families, you go from less perfect to more 
perfect organizations, and proportionably from less 
noble to more noble minds. Every individual passes 
through various stages of physical improvement and 
deterioration, and exhibits corresponding variations 
in intellectual powers and emotional states. The 
human brain, commencing in a fold of nervous mat- 
ter, advances successively through forms resembling 
the brains of fishes, reptiles, birds, etc. After birth, 
while it is yet soft, the mind manifests itself; as it 
grows firmer, the intellect strengthens; and as it 
passes through the seven ages, the mind grows with 
its growth, matures with its maturity, and declines 
with its decay, until it ends in “second childishness 
and mere oblivion.” 

Moreover, the mind is affected by the health of 
the brain. If this organ be struck, the memory may 
be impaired ; if it be compressed, the mental opera- 
tions may be suspended ; if it be inflamed, lunacy 
may result; if it be weakened, delirium; if it be 
softened, fatuity; if it be not properly supplied 
with blood, or if its blood be not made of suitable 


32 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


materials, or if its circulation be accelerated or re- 
_tarded, or if its sympathies with -other organs be dis- | 
turbed, the operations of the mind will be accelerated, 
checked, or perverted. If it be strongly affected by 
narcotics for a length of time, its whole character 
may be changed. Finally, death destroys all indica- 
tions of mind. Lay the corpse in the ground, and it 
is soon resolved into oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, 
carbon, etc., which, by the route of the atmosphere, 
soon pass into other animate forms; finally, there 
remains no trace of the body, and no echo of the 
soul. The inference is, that the mind is a mere 
function of the brain. 

We submit that there are three errors in this in- 
duction: The statements are not properly qualified, 
the view taken is imperfect, and the relation of the 
subjects is not correctly ascertained. 

1. The statements are not properly qualified. 
The father of inductive philosophy pointed out the 
tendency to be more impressed with affirmative facts 
than with negative ones; although it often happens 
that a single negative, well established, is fatal to a 
theory. 

a. Although the human brain resembles that of 
inferior creatures, having no part which is not found 
in some of them, it is not absolutely larger than that 
of some other animals ; for the elephant’s exceeds it in 
size; nor is it larger, in proportion to the body, than 
the brain of every other animal ; for the rabbit’s brain 
in this respect is twice and a half as large as man’s,* 


* The average weight of the whole encephalon in proportion to 
that of the body in man is I to 36; in the mammals, I to 186; in 


SPIRITUALITY. 33 


6. The intelligence of inferior creatures is not in 
proportion as their brains resemble that of man; the 
brain of the rat wants convolutions, that of the swine 
does not; yet the former animal has more cunning 
than the latter. The brain of the chimpanzee $9 
closely resembles the human that if the anatomist 
could supply his dissecting-table with the former, he 
would never need the latter; not an organ nor a 
vessel nor a ventricle wanting; not a difference 
either in material or configuration or situation of 
parts; the only differences discernible are in the size 
of the parts, the number of the convolutions, the depth 
of the sulci, and the relative thickness of the cortical 
part. Yet the chimpanzee has no reason, nor one- 
thousandth part of the instinct of the honey-bee, 
which has no brain, only ganglia, for the nervous 
center. Take the most stupid negro, even though he 
be deaf and dumb and blind, and by proper instruc- 
tion you may teach him verbal language, abstraction, 
generalization, right and wrong, the knowledge of 
God, aspiration after a higher state, gradual, cease- 
less intellectual and moral progress. You prove that - 
he has within him all the powers of the noblest mind 
and all the elements of the profoundest knowledge. 
The difference between him and the philosopher is 
only in degree. But by no process can you bring the 
best ape up to his level; the difference between them 
is in £¢vd. There is here an immense moral chasm, 


birds, 1 to 212; in reptiles, 1 to 1,321; in fishes, 1 to 5,668, but there 
are exceptions, In the blue-headed tit the proportion is 1 to 12 3 in 
the gold-finch, 1 to 24; in the field-mouse, 1 to 31. It is alleged, 
however, that in birds and rodent mammals the sensory ganglia forms 
a considerable portion of the encephalon. - 


34 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


with nothing in the mechanism to account for it. 
Whatever cunning or capacity inferior creatures show, 
is instinctive, automatic, untaught, not directed by 
their will. 

c. The capacities of the different varieties of a race 
that is intellectually and morally cultivable can not 
be speculatively determined. The question is an ex- 
perimental one. Who knows but that, in the lapse 
of ages, the path of empire and civilization may 
be reversed; that migrations, changes of climate, of 
food, of shelter, of habit, and of education, may sink 
some branches of the human family and raise oth- 
ers? . Are there not African-shaped skulls in Eu- 
rope, and Caucasian-shaped skulls in Africa? Does 
it appear that in each tribe, family, and nation, men 
occupy a position corresponding to their cerebral 
development? Is the size of a man’s brain the 
measure of his intellectual capacity? Chief Justice 
Marshall and JLord Byron were remarkable for the 
smallness of their heads. 

@. Maturity of mind does not correspond to ma- 
turity of body; the body of man becomes mature at 
forty-five. His mind continues to improve, if prop- 
erly employed, down to old age. In every depart- 
ment men have usually displayed their greatest tal- 
ents, and won their noblest laurels, after they had 
begun to experience bodily decline. The chief claim 
of Havelock to renown rests upon the achievements 
of advanced years. The ablest judicial decisions ever 
given in England and in this country have been pro- 
nounced by judges who had reached their seventieth 
year. Lords Brougham and Lyndhurst, after they 


SPIRITUALITY. 35 


had passed beyond their three-score years and ten, 
and, while their eyes were dim and their knees trem- 
bled, had thoughts clear as the sun, minds soaring as 
the eagle; the latter, when eighty-six, and needing 
assistance to rise from his seat, uttered speeches more 
replete with wisdom and eloquence than those of his 
earlier years. A similar remark may be made of 
New England's “old man eloquent,” and Kentucky’s 
favorite son—statesmen whose names will be pro- 
nounced with veneration, long as the noblest com- 
bination of genius, patriotism, and humanity, can 
charm the human heart. 

There is indeed a period when the greatest intel- 
lect grows duli and inactive, owing to the failure of 
the senses, by which the soul, losing its communication 
with the world, loses its zzterest in it. 

é. The brain may be much injured while the mind 
is unimpaired. According to the morbid anatomy of 
Haller, it would seem that there is no part of the 
encephalon which has not been impaired or destroyed 
without producing any important change of the intel- 
lectual and moral faculties. Among the cases recorded 
are some in which the whole cortical part was wasted, 
while the senses remained entire. M. Flourens, a 
writer of authority, thinks there is a center in the 
brain where the senses and their sympathies. are 
united, the division of which will interrupt the mani- 
festation of mind; but he proves, incontestably, that 
the brain may be destroyed to a large extent without 
destroying any of the mental functions.* 

2. Another error to which, in our inductions, we 


* Edinburgh Review, Vol. XI, p. 154. 
4 


36 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


are liable, is studying subjects from a single point of 
v1ew. 

We have surveyed the mental phenomena through 
the body ; let us survey the body through the mental 
phenomena. Perception, judgment, reason, imagina- 
tion, will, conscience, are as veal as solidity and ex- 
tension; and the tabernacle of thought is as actual an 
abode to man as that of the flesh, and susceptible of 
higher proof. Seeing, hearing, feeling, etc., by which 
you are certified of matter, are but states of mind ; 
the soul, therefore, is your only witness of the exist- 
ence of the body. Nor is its power over the body 
small. Volition influences perception, sometimes with- 
drawing from sensations as if altering the conditions 
or modifying the powers of the brain; witness the 
philosopher in his abstraction, or the poet in his 
reverie, or compare the loud noises which do zo¢ wake 
the young mother with the soft ones that do. It 
walks amid sensations, remembrances, judgments, as 
a shepherd on his mountains, letting loose this flock 
and confining that, and often chains tumultuous pas- 
sion into quiet submission. Reason, long continued, © 
wearies as much as excessive muscular action. /mag- 
ination cures, perhaps, more cases than medicine, and 
has power to kill, as has often been shown by melan- 
choly experiment. When thought kills with the same 
speed, and in the way as a stone, if the one is real, is 
not the other? Who does not know the influence of 
passion over the body? Fear blanches the cheek, 
shame mantles it; panic weakens the muscles, courage 
strengthens them ; wishes speak through the eye; hope 
wreathes its smiles ; manliness manifests itself in every 


SPIRITUALITY. 37 


look, attitude, and motion of the man; religion spreads 
a sunset calm over the features, reflecting heavenly 
glory. A whisper may instantly derange the whole 
frame, and another whisper may restore it. An item 
of intelligence may smite one dead’ as quickly as a 
stroke of lightning, or may lift a man from the verge 
of the grave ; yet from the influence of the mind over 
the body, we may not argue that it is the cause of 
the body, much less that it zs the body. 

It can hardly be denied that there are conditions 
in which the mind perceives objects independently of 
the senses, and in which, though active, it is insensible 
to external impressions. 

3. A third error consists in assigning a wrong re- 
lation to two things which stand connected. Mind and 
body have a relation to each other. What is that 
relation? It is that of instrument and agent; this 
is the only relation upon which we can explain all 
the phenomena. The bones are but scaffolding, the 
muscles and tendons ropes and pulleys; the lungs a 
breathing apparatus, the stomach a digesting one, the 
brain a thinking one. The senses are instruments for 
communicating with distant objects, and constructed 
upon the same principles as the telescope and the ear- 
trumpet, and no more capable of seeing or hearing 
than they. The tongue is a telegraph ; the only differ- 
ance between it-and the common one is, that the wires 
pass along the mouth instead of the streets. Break 
the connection in either case and you stop the com- 
munication; but do you destroy the operator? Only 
connect the broken ends, and he will prove that he 
possesses all his original power. This is no new 


38 . EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


philosophy. It is older than Plato or Cicero. The 


language of all nations is formed upon this supposi- 


tion, and a materialist can hardly state his own 
hypothesis without using terms that contradict it. 

If the body be the instrument of mind, what won- 
der if the mental manifestations should vary with the 
degree of corporeal perfection and vigor and state of 
health, as the movements of the ship depend greatly 
upon the perfection of the ropes and pulleys of the 
sailor? In regard to the ertent of this relation, the 
philosophers who take this view do not agree: some 
maintaining that the body is merely the medium of 
mental manifestation, that the soul is independent 
both of its material tenement and external conditions, 
and that all its apparent disorders are but perversions 
or obscurations of its operations by its bodily organ- 
ism, as the dimming or distortions of a light by a re- 
flecting medium. Others maintain that, in our present 
state, the operations of the mind are more or less in- 
fluenced by the material conditions with which it is 
associated. Both parties, however, recognize some- 
what in the mental constitution above what can be 
attributed to matter. 

We conclude, therefore, that the materialist, sup- 
posing his alleged facts true, has mistaken the velatzon 
between body and soul, which is not that of cause and 
effect, but of instrument and agent. This will be 
confirmed by considering the subject deductively 
The materialistic hypothesis is disproved by the na- 
ture of matter, the unity of consciousness, and the 
doctrines of human responsibility, the immortality of 
man, and the existence of God. 


at LRAT OALE LY eS 39 


When we predicate one thing of another, we | 
ought to know both what the one is and what the 
other. What, then, is matter? and what is mind? Of 
essences we know nothing; all we know is properties. 
When we define matter, we group together certain 
qualities which attach to it—divisibility, impenetra- 
bility, porosity, compressibility, extension, figure. We 
infer, because we can not well help it, that these quali- 
ties have a substratum, and we call this matter. To 
define mind, we name another group of qualities— 
thought, will, memory, etc. We infer that these also 
have a substratum, and we call that mind. Does any 
one ask, Can not God connect the attributes of mind 
with matter? Yes, but he can not make matter to be 
mind, any more than he can make a triangle to be a 
square. Is it alleged that the difference between po 
rosity and memory is no greater than between divisi- 
bility and figure, we must be reminded that the dis- 
tinction between matter and mind is not grounded on 
the dissimilarity of their properties, but on the zzcom- 
patibility of them. The properties of mind are certi- 
fied by consciousness, those of matter by sense; the 
former are active, the latter are passive; the one are 
variable, the other permanent; the one internal, the 
other external; the one percipient, the other perceived. 
It seems impossible that matter and mind should be 
one. Here, so far as my understanding is concerned, 
is an end of the controversy. But, that we may an- 
swer a fool according to his folly, let us consider the 
several theories of the materialists. These may be 
reduced to four; namely, the strictly material, the 
mechanical, the chemical, and the physiological. 


40 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Strict materialism is limited to two suppositions ; 
namely, either that mind is an zltimate particle 
of matter, or a collection of particles. Take the 
first. We admit, despite Berkeley, that matter has 
a real existence, and, despite Boscovich, that it does 
not consist of mere mathematical points of -attrac- 
tion and repulsion, but is something solid and in- 
soluble. We agree that there are particles that are 
ultimate; this seems evident from the chemical law of 
definite proportions. We grant that the theory is 
consistent with the doctrine of immortality ; indeed it 
favors it. If mind is matter, we can hardly suppose 
that it will be destroyed. We have reason to believe 
that the globe has contained the same quantity of 
matter ever since it was created. If the particles of 
the earth were either increased or diminished, its posi- 
tion in relation to other orbs would be altered, and 
the calculations of astronomy would be unreliable; but 
they have been verified to the accuracy of a moment. 
Though matter be in a constant circuit, from animated 
to inanimate forms, and back again, it remains. We 
do not say that it is indestructible, but that its de- 
struction does not seem to enter into the economy of 
the Creator. 

But let us endeavor to conceive what an ultimate 
particle of matter is. It is computed that in one 
hundredth of a cubic inch of blood there are about 
one million of red globules; but these are not ulti- 
mate. The animalculz of the Raseneisen are only 
one-third the diameter of a globule of human blood. 
According to Professor Ehrenterg, the size of a single 
one of those infusoria, which form the Polenschefer, 


SPIRITUALITY. 41 


amounts, upon an average, and in the greater part, 
to one two-hundred-and-eighty-eighth part of a line, 
which equals one-sixth of the thickness of a human 
hair, reckoning its average at one forty-eighth of 
a line. About twenty-three millions of these ani- 
mals would make up a cubic line, and would, in 
fact, be contained in it. There are one thousand 
-seven hundred and twenty-eight cubic lines in a 
cubic inch, and, therefore, a cubic inch would con- 
tain, on an average, forty-one thousand millions of 
these animals; and, as they are endowed with sensi- 
bility and voluntary motion, and subject to waste and 
repair, each must have vessels and nerves; and each 
nerve, each vessel, is made up of globules, each glob- 
bule of particles. 

When you estimate the size of ultimate particles, 
you need figures like those in which you compute 
celestial spaces. Now, imagine one of these particles 
a human soul, taking in fact after fact, science after 
science, system after system ; enlarging its capacities 
as its treasures are increased; plunging, on wings of 
imagination, one moment to the profoundest depths, 
the’ next to the loftiest heights; capable, by will, of 
resisting a moral universe in arms, and able, by rea- 
son, to link cause after cause, until from nature it 
ascends to God. Imagine it placed in the pineal 
gland—-a beautiful little structure, hanging by two 
peduncles from the bed of the optic nerve. It would 
be to this gland as an insect to an island, and to the 
whole brain as a humming-bird to a continent. This 
brave little atom looks through the eye, hears through 
the ear, walks by the feet, and talks loudly by the 


42 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


tongue; may be it makes a telescope, and looks 
through it at the stars. Fancy one of these atoms 
circumnavigating the globe; another writing Homer’s 
another, in 


’ 


“Tliad ;” another Newton’s “ Principia ; 
Napoleon, marching troops across the Alps, and re- 
constructing the map of Europe. He who can believe 
this, has a mind infinitesimally small, and capable of 
receiving truth in the decillionth dilution. 

Bear in mind that there is no foundation for this 
supposition any more than for supposing the North 
Pole to consist of the south wind. Nor does it relieve 
the materialist from his difficulties. The particle is 
still matter, and its properties are inconsistent with 
those of mind. Small as it is, it may be conceived 
to revolve on its axis; but who can conceive that his 
consciousness can rotate, one part coming up while 
-he other goes down? It is said that it is not so hard 
to conceive how mind can be a particle as how it 
can be without one. We answer: JZystery we may 
expect, it 1s every-where; but we are not to receive 
contradictions. 

But is the mind a combination of particles? If 
it is, it must have a top and a bottom, an east end 
and a west end, a south side and a north side. If 
so, it is conceivable that a man may have a con- 
sciousness with its top blown off, or its bottom fallen 
through, or its east end fallen in, or its west end 
fallen out. But the person, the self, is a unit; it is 
inconceivable that it should be made up of parts. 
To talk so, is to talk nonsense. 

Let us pass to mechanical theories. The me- 
chanical theory that has attracted the greatest 


SPIRITUALITY. 43 


attention in modern times is that of Hartley. He 
resolves all mental phenomena into sensation and 
association. An analysis obviously imperfect; for 
how can a volition be placed in either of these 
categories? He accounts for both by vibrations in 
an imaginary ether, caused by motions in the nerv- 
ous matter. Those produced by the nervous ex- 
tremities he denominates sexsory vibratiuncles ; those 
Originating in the central mass, motory vibratiuncles. 

It may be admitted that certain changes in the 
nervous system accompany mental phenomena, and 
this, perhaps, is all that Dr. Hartley meant; for he 
protests against being interpreted as opposing the 
immortality of the soul.* It must be confessed, 
however, that the soul, in his system, is of little 
account, an idle spectator. The ether and its vibra- 
tions are suppositions, such as would be the hypothe- 
sis that magnetic attraction is caused by vibrations in 
the Gulf-stream. MHartley’s disciples have, however, 
gone beyond him. Priestley, Belsham, and others, 
maintain that man is wholly a material being, all 
his functions being the result of mechanism. But 
how do they account for mind? 

Grant all that they assume; suppose the head 
to be transparent, and that we, looking through a 
microscope, see the motions along the nerve and in 
the brain, and the vibrations of the ether,—should we 

* Speaking of sensation, thought, etc., he says: “The connection 
of these with matter and their dependence onit, are perhaps more fully 
seen in the foregoing account of vibrations and associations than in 
any other system that has been produced. However, there remains one 


chasm still, that between sensation and the material organs, which this 
theory does not attempt to fill up.” (Hartley on Man, Vol. XI, p. 383.) 
5 


44 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


see sensation, reflection, will? No; simply matter 
and motion, both of which we see daily, and of both 
of which we know enough to say that neither sepa- 
rately nor together are they mind. 

But it may be alleged that these motions pro- 
duce mind, as certain motions produce light. For 
illustration, let us suppose the vibratory theory of 
light to be the true one. We have, then, an 
elastic ether, a vibration, a series of undulations, 
and light as a result. The cause is matter and 
motion, the effect light. Here is a unit produced 
by innumerable particles, thrown into innumerable 
waves, But this is sophistry; for the explanation as- 
sumes the very unit for which it seeks to account. 
You can not have light, in the sense of a unit, with- 
out mind. The word light is ambiguous, signifying 
both the cause of light, which is material, and the 
sensation, which is mental, Take away the conscious 
being, and you have no sensation of light—only mat- 
ter and its undulations. The latter is not a unit, 
the former is. It is the fallacy of ambiguous middle. 
Light is a unit; something material is light; there- 
fore, something material is a unit. Light, in one 
premise, stands for the undulations of matter; in the 
other, for a sensation, 

Let us pass to the chemical theory, which is, that 
the chemical action which the elements of the food. 
and the oxygen of the air mutually exercise on each 
other produces the phenomena of mind. That is to 
say, that intellection and passion are the result of 
combustion—a doctrine for which there is as great an 
authority as Liebig. But when oxygen unites with 


SPIRITUALITY. | 45 


the phosphorus of the brain, what can we have but 
phosphoric acid ; and when it combines with hydro- 
gen, what but water, etc.? We are well acquainted 
with these compounds, for we can make them in the 
laboratory ; but we can not make mind. I may be re- 
minded that the same elements in different propor- 
tions constitute bodies of different properties, and 
that there are isomeric bodies in which the same 
elements in the same proportions produce com- 
pounds of different properties, owing, as we presume, 
to variations of molecular arrangement. 

But the chemist has all the elements and all the 
facilities for making all the combinations of them. 
Why does he not produce mental phenomena in his 
laboratory? We should like to see him try it. We 
will not ask him to make his retorts sing like Jenny 
Lind, or his pneumatic cistern bring forth a “ Para- 
dise Lost,” but simply approach it. Moreover, if 
these combinations of oxygen and phosphorus, etc., 
produce mind in the brain, why not in the bones, 
where phosphorus abounds? Moreover, if mind were 
thus produced, would it not be evanescent as these 
processes? Nor can we see any reason why these 
operations should not go on by night as well as day, 
as digestion and respiration, instead of being sus- 
pended by sleep. Nor is it easy to see how, upon 
this theory, memory can treasure up its knowledge 
so that the octogenarian, while he forgets the trans- 
actions of yesterday, can recount the scenes of his 
youth. . Why slumbers the new phosphoric acid? 
Why so vivid the old? 

Now let us pass to Bir nieces theories. Does 


46 *EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


organization cause mind? But the vegetadle is organ- 
ized; nor is animal organization always attended 
with mind. Even Auman organization, in all its deli- 
cacy and perfection, may be found without mind, as 
in many cases after instant death. You may assume 
that there is lesion in such cases, but the microscope 
reveals none. Add “fe to perfect human organiza- 
tion, and can you account for mind? You may, in- 
deed, if you insert mental operations as a part of 
your definition of life. But what is life? It may 
exist in the human being without mind, or even brain. 
“Put life and organization together,” cries the physi- 
cian; “blood passing through a healthy, living human 
brain, excites mind, as an electric wire around a 
magnet gives it the power of attracting iron.’ But 
the illustration answers not the purpose; for that 
which confers the power in this case is distinct both 
from the iron and the wire, and does not cease to 
exist when it ceases to flow through the coil. 

Some tell us that the brain secretes mind as the 
liver does bile. Zey should not put man at the Zop 
of the scale, but at the bottom. The glands secrete 
only what is contained in the blood. Whence does 
the blood come? From the chyle. Whence the 
chyle? From the food. Whence the food? From 
animals and vegetables. So the human being (Queen 
Victoria, for example,) is a mere alembic, to separate 
latent mind from beef, plum-pudding, etc. 

Such hypotheses fail to account for mental iden- 
tity. If the brain secretes the mind, it is different 
from the mind; and hence it should be provided - 
with an apparatus like the gall-gladder, to receive 


SPIRITUALITY.~ ~. °° A7 


its product. It has been conjectured that a part of 
the brain has been reserved for this purpose, which 
has been compared to a calculating machine. By 
careful scrutiny it has been computed that every 
square inch of this reserved territory is capable of 
containing eight thousand ideas. It should not, 
however, be forgotten that the body is in a constant 
flux, old particles passing out through the excre- 
tions, new ones passing in through the absorbents. 
We have not the same matter in our bodies to-day 
that we had yesterday. It is computed, upon the 
results of experiments, that about once in seven 
years the body undergoes an entire renovation. 
Amid these changes, how does the mind preserve its 
identity, supposing it to depend on material- parti- 
cles? Imagine that, instead of particle by particle, 
the whole brain, once in seven years, were to step 
out, and the new brain to come in. How. is: the 
predecessor to convey his knowledge to the suc- 
cessor? The difficulty is magnified when, instead 
of passing off at once, the brain goes little by little; 
each retiring atom must will its knowledge to the 
incoming atom, although the information it conveys 
may be but a millionth part of the poems, prayers, 
and problems that make up the sum total of the 
past mental phenomena. Nor yet have we reached 
the final difficulty. Suppose the leaves of knowledge 
all legible in the brain, you want something to read 
them. The hypothesis breaks down under its weight 
of absurdity. 

Materialism, in all its forms, is at variance with cer= 
tain cardinal doctrines believed in all ages and nations. 


48 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


1. Mind is different in its nature from matter. 
Mind is self-active, capable of controlling its princi- 
ples and trains of thought. We address logic to the 
mind, but not to the liver. You can not make a 
man a Calvinist by calomel, or a Universalist by 
belladonna. You can not cure rheumatism with Cal- 
vinism, nor neuralgia with Arminianism. Mind is 
self-conscious ; it is capable of considering itself in 
its unity and abstracted from all matter. It is mor- 
ally conscious, capable of abstracting for considera- 
tion the moral quality of actions from all others, dis- 
cerning their differences, impelling from wrong and 
to right, and rewarding obedience to its dictates and 
punishing disobedience. 

It is religiously conscious, capable of aspiring 
after God. Can these attributes be of matter? The 
products of mind transcend matter. If mind were 
material, all its knowledge would be results of the 
senses. Sensations, perceptions, or repeated sensa- 
tions, and conceptions, or revived sensations, would 
constitute the circle of our knowledge. But we have 
reflections, criticisms of the sensations; judgments, 
combinations of the sensations ; and ideas of the ab- 
stract, the absolute, the infinite, deyond both sensa- 
tions and the world which produces them. _ 

Truth does not shrink with the brain or decay 
with the body, nor can it be varied by climate, diet, 
or medicine. The axioms of mathematics, the facts 
of science, the principles of morals, are the same 
yesterday, to-day, and forever—equally grand to us in 
age or youth, sickness or health, life or death. 

Men, every-where, hold themselves, and their fel- 


SPIRITUALITY. 49 


low-men, accountable for their actions. All languages, 
all civil governments, all criminal codes, are predi- 
cated upon this doctrine. But, if mind be matter, or 
_ mechanism, or organization, how can a man govern 
himself? Dr. Priestley justly says, “The doctrine of 
necessity is the immediate result of the doctrine of the 
materiality of man, for mechanism is the undoubted 
consequence of materialism.” So Dr. Cooper, his 
American editor, judges; for he boastfully says that 
the time has come “when the separate existence of 
mind, the freedom of the will, etc., are no longer en- 
titled to public discussion.” Nor do later materialists 
teach a different doctrine. ‘ Man’s acts,” says Zoust, 
“are the result of his organization. His organs are 
made for him; therefore the responsibility of his acts 
rests with his Maker.” Atkinson and Martineau, say: 
“ All causes are material causes. I am as completely 
the result of my nature, and impelled to do what I do, 
as the needle to point to the north, or the puppet to 
move according as the string is pulled.” 

Such a conclusion is as abhorrent to common 
sense as to common consciousness. What father, in 
announcing the birth of his heir, says that a new 
series of physical .phenomena has started in his 
abode? Turn to history. Here, for example, is 
Sweden’s Charles XII. Russia, Denmark, Poland, 
league against him, and agree upon a division of 
the anticipated spoils. While the troops are gather- 
ing for the conflict, the frightened Swedish Council 
meet to discuss the terms of an accommodation. In 
the midst sits the monarch, an indolent, frivolous boy, 
who, hampered with bad habits, and encompassed with 


50 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


dissolute companions, beguiles his days with vain. 


amusements ; evincing no capacity for the cabinet, 
and no ardor for the field. The discussions of the 
evening set his mind in motion, and, as if touched 
with an angel’s spear, he starts up and silences the 
cabinet: “My resolution is taken; I will smite the 
first foe that attacks me.” Instantly the idle lad is 
the adamantine man; the Nestor in council, the 
Achilles in fight. The camp, the voyage, the march, 
and the battle are his delight; the drum-beat, the 
clangor of armor, and the clash of arms are his music. 
He humbles Denmark, terrifies Russia, conquers Po- 
land, and, for years, waves his flag from the Dnieper 
to the Baltic, and from the German Ocean well-nigh 
to the gates of Moscow. 

That stern mind, which neither the charms of 
peace, nor the persuasions of ministers could shake, 
which, in the heart of an enemy’s land, cut off from 
provisions, surrounded by desolations, and encom- 
passed by foes, stood unmoved, and looked onward, 
_ even through files of fallen friends, stiffened by famine 
and frost, was no mere physical phenomenon. When 
a cannon-ball, from the enemy’s fort, crushed the 
temples of the king, it did something more than upset 
a bowlful of cerebral jelly.* 


* According to Vauquelin, the human brain consists of : 


Water, 2 ; , . 3 ‘ 80. parts. 
Albumen, ‘ : P : Sane ye < 
White fatty fatter: ‘ A : . 4.53) .°° 
Red fatty matter, : . : ; , 170 pis 
Osmazome, . : . 2 ° . I.12 pte 
Phosphorus, 4 ° ° i ree One: b 
Acids, salts, and Siete ‘ - A 5.1574 


100.090 


ee 


SPIRITUALITY. 51 


The materialistic hypotheses, except the first, are 
inconsistent with the doctrine of immortality. Let 
either be granted, and you can prove death to be the 
end of man. True, one may believe that the parti- 
cles of the disorganized body, after performing in- 
numerable circuits through the animal, vegetable, and 
mineral worlds, will, after the lapse of centuries, be 
gathered and built up into the identical body that is 
dissolved by death; but he who can believe this is 
more to be wondered at for his faith than for his 
skepticism. Why reconstruct the worn-out, diseased, 
emaciated body, since, if mind is material, man is 
irresponsible, and has no more connection with his 
fellow-man, or with God, than a water-wheel? More- 
over, this would not be resurrection, but reconstruc- 
tion; not immortality, but new mortality. 

Materialism is anti-Christian. What, upon the 
materialistic hypothesis, was our Lord? Were the 
operations of mind in him but a motion of particles, 
eliminations from the blood, or conflagrations of phos- 
phorus? If all the phenomena of thought, passion, 
conscience, will, in us, can be accounted for in this 
way, why not in him? If so, what was his condition 
before he appeared upon the earth? If he was a 
spirit then, was he not after he was manifest in the 
flesh? If he had a spirit, may not we? 

Materialism involves atheism. If perception, will, 
and affection in maz be properties of matter, or re- 
sults either of mechanism, chemical combination, or 
organization, are they not such in God also? We 
can not attribute the same property to different 
essences. On this supposition, how can there be an 


52 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Almighty God? Name but his attributes—eternity, 
ubiquity, unity, omniscience. If God is matter, his 
mind is accidental; for we know that mental prop- 
erties are not essentzal to matter. If he is organ- 
ized, who organized him? If mechanism, who moves 
him? Excuse me, I can not be profane. Has not 
the thought of God, from your early years, been the 
favorite idea of your mind, the center of its most 
cherished associations and valued reflections? More 
fresh than boyhood’s gambols are your meditations 
beneath the solemn forests that begirt the village 
school-house, when you gazed alone upon the silent 
stars and thought of the invisible One who created 
and sustains them. Sweet the memory of Sabbath 
sunsets, when, reposing on the grass-plot beneath 
the shade, you wept tears of gratitude to Him who 
bathed you in the golden light. Oft, at midnight, 
when your eyes were wakeful, on childhood’s downy 
bed, have you thought of the great Fountain of be- 
ing and blessedness, and, with ruby lips, fitted only 
to suggest a mother’s kisses, have prayed : 
“Earth has engrossed my love too long ; 
’T is time [ lift mine eyes 
Upward, dear Father, to iy throne, 
And to my native skies.” 

Maturer years have deepened this impression of the 
Almighty, until it has become the refuge and rest of 
the soul. What are the sciences but maps of uni- 
versal laws ; and universal laws, but the channels of 
universal power; and universal power, but the out- 
goings of a universal mind? What are all physical 
phenomena properly understood, but the unfolding 


SPIRITUALITY. CF 


of a heart that delighteth to make the outgoings of 
the morning and evening to rejoice? Even the 
thunder and the lightning are the orchestra of his 
temple, aiding the devout spirit to a more profound 
worship and a more perfect joy. All the forms and 
motions of matter are pervaded by wise design—a 
design that is every-where pervaded by goodness. 

The more grand and mysterious world within is 
no less full of God. The faculties of the human 
soul are as beautifully balanced as the spheres ; 
thoughts and feelings have their laws; relations and 
obligations are fixed; and though, while “nature is 
bound in fate,” the will is free, yet the vicegerent of 
God looks down upon it, to remind it of Him “in 
whom we live and move and have our being.” 

Let me say with that great man who, as on the 
wings of an angel, flew through the spheres of 
thought with the Gospel of modern’ science, “I 
would rather believe all the fables in the Legend 
and the Talmud and the Koran, than that this uni- 
versal frame is without mind.” We know that there 
are difficulties in the belief that God is a Spirit; 
but they are the difficulties of mystery, not of in- 
consistency. There is a God, and there is a spirit 
in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth 
them understanding. In this, as in other instances, 
the culminations of philosophy are the starting-points 
of revelation. 


i N dire ee a 5 ‘s re 
vs * in: at: re 3 BAS ai bier Nad y, \ q ; - pose 5 ae, Ai a ve ey 
t y ~ +a - “ts a ‘ ¥ , = ; a fe i 
wart Eee 


eet 2 eat Bak 


PRET Bae, 
‘aa #4 ha 


f 


: des ary ae Bie 8 
‘ This genie t eters ba + a: 
pohalhim "th, Lek Rae ES 
thie i <5 
pide Frit, i grab ae 


bhh Catalg ae! me, signin ay get? iis os 


* 


Ill. 


IMMORTALITY. 


HE argument for another life, which nature 

affords, is by different parties variously esti- 
mated at from zero to conclusiveness. We place it 
midway between them. 

Though we may grant that reason did not origin- 
ate the idea of a future life—for her argument implies 
a taste for abstract science, which implies a state of 
civilization, and this, in turn, implies the bonds of 
morals and religion—and though we grant, also, 
that the voice of philosophy concerning a future 
state is rather that of ope than of conviction, and 
that the reasonings of ancient sages on this subject 
would not satisfy us, and led them to believe in the 
pre-existence of the soul,—yet may reason construct 
an argument fitted to resolve doubts, answer cavils, 
develop harmonies between nature and_ revelation, 
and create an antecedent probability which may pre- 
pare the mind to receive the Scripture statements ; 
an argument sufficient of itself to lay men under 
obligations to act as if it were demonstrative, see- 
ing that probability is the only guide of human life, 
though not adequate to restrain the passions or re- 
lieve the woes of the masses of mankind. Of this 


argument four things may be premised. 
55 


56 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


1. It is cumulative; each element of the series 
has an independent power, so that its strength is to 
be estimated, not by its weakest part, but by the 
combined force of the whole. It may be compared 
to a number of chains arranged to sustain the same 
weight. 

2. It is progressive; it acquires increased power 
as man advances in civilization. We may infer that, 
when he reaches his highest state of culture, which 
is his most natural state, it will shine as the noon- 
day sun. 

3. It is partial; though it may not reach the con- 
clusion, there is a reserve of proof and argumentation 
by which it may be supplemented. 

4. It is difficult to estimate it, since we can not, 
if we would, divest ourselves, even for a moment, of 
the influences of our religious faith. 

It may be divided into the metaphysical and the 
moral. Let us limit ourselves to the latter; the 
former is merely negative. In passing, we may sum 
it up. We can not prove that death does more than 
dissolve the body. But the soul is not the body; 
therefore we can not prove that death destroys the 
soul. Some claim that this argument has affirmative 
value, and allege that we have the same reason to 
believe that the soul survives the dissolution of the 
body as that the ultimate particles of matter do. 
But this is not sound; for the belief that the particles 
of the body survive death, rests upon experimental 
proof. A better affirmative argument is in this form: 
We believe that the soul, with all its attributes, will 
continue, unless it be altered or destroyed by death. 


IMMORTALITY. 57 


We are satisfied that death will not alter or destroy 
it. Thus, we have the same kind of probability. that 
the soul will exist after death as that the sun will 
shine to-morrow, though not in the same degree. 
This probability is strengthened by many analogies, 
and often by the phenomena of dying. In the 
agonies of dissolving nature, when the body has 
been worn to a skeleton, and its most important 
organs are decayed, the soul sometimes rises with 
transcendent energies ; instead of being carried down 
with the body, it feels as though it could soar aloft, 
bearing the body on its wings. When you accom- 
pany your friend, conversing, step by step, as he 
passes to the door of death, and hear his voice, still 
pregnant with living thought, until the very door 
closes upon him, you naturally believe that, though 
he is hidden from your view, he still lives. 

This argument, resting upon the distinction be- 
tween the living powers and the animal body, would 
prove, also, the immortality of brutes. At such a 
conclusion many revolt. No wonder; for it carries 
with it not only the immortality of horses and lions, 
but of locusts and frogs, and flies and fleas. This 
revulsion is, however, greater at first than upon 
reflection. Suppose all animated beings immortal, 
the Almighty, in immensity and eternity, may have 
modes of disposing of them that we know not; or 
they may exhibit latent faculties or undergo trans- 
formations of which we have no conception; or, on 
the other side of the grave, as on this, there may be 
numerous and diversified orders of being. But let 
us not overestimate the affirmative force of the argu- 


58 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


ment; it is not demonstrative, only probable. The 
argument for immortality, as a necessary consequence, 
is borrowed from the Greek philosophy. Admit that 
the soul is naturally immortal, who made it so? 
God. Can not he who made it so, make it other- 
wise? Grant that the soul is not naturally immortal, 
can not God make it so? We come, then, after all, 
to the will of the Creator. Prove the natural immor- 
tality both of man and beast, yet if it can be shown 
unreasonable that the latter should survive death, 
we can readily suppose that God will annihilate it; 
and, while the soul of the beast goeth downward, 
there may be abundant reasons why the soul of man 
should go upward. They who think that the brutes 
are immortal have not properly considered the great . 
distinction between instinct and reason. 

Instinct is complete at birth; it derives nothing 
from instruction or experience; it gathers no strength 
from age to age; in every species its capacities and 
results are no greater now than in the beginning. 
Not so with reason. Instinct is dependent on the 
nerves, subordinate to physiological law, and trace- 
able in the animal organism. Reason is not, espe- 
cially in its highest exercises. 

Instinct, however strongly acting, injures not the 
body. Reason, excessively exercised, does. Instinct 
can not be overtasked. Reason can. Instinct can 
be trained only in the zzfaucy of the animal. Reason 
comes forth slowly, but improves, when properly ex- 
ercised, more and more, as life advances. 

Instinctive love respects only the perpetuation of 
the species, and ceases as soon as the offspring can 


IMMORTALITY. 59 


a 


provide for itself. Human love awakens the highest 
sentiments, spreads a divine charm over the do- 
mestic circle, gives us new interest in all humanity, 
follows the offspring through life, provides for its 
temporal wants, is concerned for its spiritual and 
eternal welfare, lends endearment to the grave, and 
awakens songs of gratitude to God. 

~ Instinct has no conscience. What resembles this 
in the brute, is dependent upon an association of ideas, 
artificially created by man. Human ideas of right and 
wrong spring from reason ‘meditating upon moral, 
social, and religious relations. 

Instinctive memory depends upon eoetee 
produced by external causes, and renewed by their 
repetition. Rational memory is independent of sense, 
and relates chiefly to acquirements made through re- 
flection, and, in general, voluntarily arranged by pro- 
cesses more or less artificial. Instinct exhibits no 
degrees or variations ; reason presents every variety 
from the savage to the sage. 

Instinct, in all its processes, relates exclusively to 
the wants and uses of the body. Its simple aim is to 
perpetuate organic life, and it acts only through the 
mechanism of that life. What purpose can it serve 
after the body is destroyed? or how act when ‘the 
mechanism is gone? Reason has reference to unborn 
generations and distant ages, and acts on that which 
is eternal. It ‘surveys all nature; constructs all 
science; perceives and embodies beauty ; discovers 
truth ; appreciates and demonstrates goodness ; sends 
down its accumulations to future generations, to be 
increased ard applied to new and grander purposes ; 

| 6 


60 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


has an appetite for continued life, a regard for post- 
humous fame, and an aspiration after God. 

There is a question, not simply curious, concern- 
ing the soul, to which, in passing, I will allude. It 
is often assumed, especially by theologians, that the 
human soul comes by direct creation; and poets are 
accustomed to speak of it as a spark of Deity, or a 
drop of the infinite ocean, soon to be lost therein. 
The “Conflict of Ages” is constructed upon this 
supposition. We think it a false assumption. Differ- 
ent as instinct and reason are, we can not see why 
they should not follow the same law of transmission. 
“Wrapped up,” says Dr. Holmes, “in every capsule, 
bound up in every kernel, packed into every minutest 
germ, is the law written by God at the beginning, 
‘Produce thou after thy kind.” If the human soul 
were by direct creation, my son would be no relation 
to me; his body is but dust, his soul is himself. I 
should be no relation to Adam, and the human race 
would not be one, but an immense number of separate 
beings, each having a separate origin from the creative 
hand. Supposing the soul to be directly created, there 
is a difficulty in its evident depravity. Augustine, 
addressing Jerome, who held this view, says, “ Teach 
me, therefore, J entreat you, what I shall teach, teach 
what I shall hold, and tell me, if souls are created one 
by one for those who are born; when do they sin in 
the little ones so that they need remission of sins in 
baptism?” But supposing it generated, there is no 
more reason why we should wonder at the transmis- 
sion of evil mental or moral tendencies, than of phys- 
ical ones—of preneness to excessive passion, than 


IMMORTALITY. 6I 


of tubercles in the lungs. It comes of the wise law 
of propagation which pervades the universe. Anal- 
ogy, the unity of the human race, the transmission of 
mental and moral peculiarities from father to son, the 
confessed depravity of mankind, and the whole tenor 
of the Bible, which speaks of father begetting son 
from age to age, all favor this view. 

There is another cognate question, not simply 
curious, but eminently important. When does the 
soul begin its existence? I answer, when the feetal 
life begins. It is not necessary for a child to breathe 
before it has a soul. Though, in the embryotic con- 
dition, its mental faculties are dormant, they neverthe- 
less exist. Hence, he who destroys the human feetus, 
is as clearly a murderer as he who destroys the breath- 
ing child. To return from the digression. An objec- 
tion has been brought against the foundation of the 
metaphysical argument. The distinction between the 
primary and secondary qualities of matter has been 
denied. Suppose it to be established, and that exten- 
sion and impenetrability, etc., are no more properties 
of matter than color or sound, leaving us nothing 
but phenomena from which to reason. What then? 
“The mental phenomena are dependent upon the ma- 
terial, so that when the latter cease, the former will 
also.” But this is assuming what can not be proved ; 
for the same consequent may follow from different 
antecedents. 

Whatever may be the affirmative value of the meta- 
physical argument, its negative force is zrreszstzble. 
It sets the question upon the platform of neutrality, 
and prepares us for the proper positive argument—the 


a“ 


62 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


moral. This is founded upon a comparison of our na- 
ture with our condition and circumstances. It may be 
divided into four heads, namely: arguments founded, 
first, upon the intellect ; second, upon the heart ; third, 
upon the conscience; and fourth, upon the dignity of 
our nature. We can give but a glance at each. 

The intellectual capacities of man are out of pro- 
portion to his present state; he needs a future one 
fully to develop and employ them. It is otherwise 
with every thing around him. Should a bird, a beast, 
or a fish, live a million years, would it acquire any new 
powers, or enlarge its capacity of enjoyment or useful- 
ness? Its instincts are perfect in the infancy of its 
being ; its members are soon matured to the greatest 
extent desirable in its sphere, and its senses and soul, 
so far as we can perceive, are incapable of improve- 
ment. Man, endued with reason and speech, is capa- - 
ble of progress in knowledge, happiness, and useful- 
ness. Every discovery he makes increases his ability 
for further researches, and there is no setting bounds 
either to his attainments or his achievements—to the 
number of his ideas, the sublimity of his conceptions, 
or the range of his thoughts. The conceptions of 
brutes are limited to earth and time. If man’s life 
is confined to the present sphere, why should his 
thoughts stray beyond it? Why, passing the bounds 
of time and space, is he permitted and prompted, on 
wings of imagination and hope, to expatiate in the 
infinite and soar into the eternal? He stands on a 
platform, from which he surveys two immensities. By 
the aid of the microscope, he looks downward upon 
wor_ds on worlds below him. By the aid of the tel- 


IMMORTALITY. 63 


escope, he looks to worlds above him. He obtains a 
glimpse of two eternities, the past and the future; his 
aspirations correspond to his position. After he has 
mapped the globe, navigated the seas, explored the 
caves, ascended the mountains, classified all minerals 
and vegetables and animals, and determined theit 
properties and habitudes and laws; analyzed earth, 
air, water, and even the human mind; applied the 
forces of nature to accomplish his purposes ; weighed, 
numbered, and named the planetary worlds; measured 
the heavenly spaces, and discovered the Jaws of celes- 
tial motions ; traveled, on the pages of history, back- 
ward to the creation of man, and, on the pages of na- 
ture, God’s elder scripture, backward still, over those 
geological epochs which bring us up to creation’s 
dawn, and forward by the prophet’s light, to the period 
when time shall be no longer—he is still athirst for 
knowledge. He desires to pierce beyond; he has 
seen but a speck, and it has made him cry out, 


“Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God 


Almighty!” What will be his rapture and adoration 
as he moves onward! He would ascend from planet 
to planet, from star to star; he would climb up the zo- 
diac, and explore the distant nebulze ; he would pause 
at each world to study its geology, geography, botany, 
philosophy ; its animal wonders, its natural charms, 
its rational inhabitants. He would commune with 
these, would learn their history, their relations, their 
religion ; above all, he would know more and more of 
their Maker; he would aspire after him, and adore 
him evermore. Yet he finds his lofty mind impris- 
oned in a body, vexed with temporal cares, doomed 


64 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


to spend its chief energies in supplying animal wants, 
and limited to a petty scene on which his vast con- 
ceptions cast supreme contempt. 

The argument may be thus compressed : The 
means of Divine wisdom are proportionate to its 
ends. If this is the only life, the capacities, concep- 
tions, and desires of the human soul are not proportion- 
ate to its ends; therefore, if this is the only life, they 
are not the bestowments of Divine wisdom. Grant 
the premises, and the only escape from the atheistic 
conclusion is in the admission of a future state. We 
are told, however, that we are not judges of the suit- 
ability of means to ends in the providence of God ; 
that what appears to us surplus power and machinery, 
may zot be. This is true in all cases of which we 
have but partial knowledge; but in this instance the 
whole case is before us. It is alleged that many de- 
sires were not intended to be gratified; as, the wish 
for continued health and for higher degrees of hap- 
piness in the present life. Both of these, however, 
may be canceled by the higher desire of a future 
‘state, with reference to which they may be thwarted, 
It is also argued that the openings into the universe 
which science affords, and our insatiable desire of 
knowledge, are sufficiently accounted for by the influ- 
ence they have in lifting us above our petty cares 
and low passions, and sending us forward in the 
career of improvement and heroic action. But why 
elevate and inspire man, if life is a phantom and 
death its close? or why should God, in instructing 
his children, mock them? The force of this argu- 
ment varies with the character of the arguist, and 


IMMORTALITY. 65 


the stand-point he occupies. A sensual and incon- 
siderate man, taking a superficial view of mankind, 
will be but slightly impressed by it. Men, in gen- 
eral, seem absorbed in the pursuits of the present 
life. In heathendom, they have but little education, 
except that of necessity. Even in Christendom, mul- 
titudes rarely lift their thoughts above the mines, 
the lanes, or the fields, in which they spend their 
lives of sensuality and drudgery. And as they treat 
themselves, so are they treated: many driven like 
beasts of burden; others led out to battle like so 
many tigers. Where, it may be asked, so far as 
they are concerned, is your ivdellectual argument 
for a future life? Shall they demand another life for 
mental culture, who utterly neglect it in this? Shall 
they complain of the barriers of knowledge who have 
never educated themselves up to those barriers ? 
This statement is an exaggeration. The darkest 
mind has its luminous hours, when it transcends its 
wonted themes. The feeblest soul may manifest 
capacities of improvement and desires of knowledge 
which, under favorable circumstances, would make it 
a Newton. If such vast capacities are not devel- 
oped in this life, may we not hope for another, in 
which they shall be? The force of the argument is 
best felt in solitary meditation. Go to the death- 
chamber of some considerate and cultivated pagan. 
His will has been written ; his watchers are dozing in 
their chairs; his lamps are dim and flickering ; all 
is silent, save the music of the katydid. We may 
fancy the dying one, as he looks through the trellis 
at the stars, thus to soliloquize: “This probably is 


66 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


the last time that I shall ever look out upon the 
world. Where shall I be when the moon rises 
again upon the earth? What hope have I of a 
future? First, then, I am conscious that my spirit 
- is as distinct from bodily organs as from the external 
objects which it beholds? I am conscious that it has 
a Father. In this world I seem as a deaf and dumb 
child, sent into an institution for mutes, with an inti- 
mation that, when I have learned how to converse 
with my Father, and honor and obey him, I shall be 
sent home. I thank God that he ever permitted 
me to behold this world, beautiful enough for the 
angels; that he gave me to know the love of father 
and mother, and wife and child ; to look into the face 
of friend, and to enjoy affections worthy of paradise. 
I feel that, though I pass away from my kindred, and | 
they cease to love me, my Father in heaven will love 
me still. I bless him that he has made me able to rea- 
son; that he has implanted within me the insatiable 
thirst of knowledge, and reflected to my vision the 
dim glimmerings of uncounted worlds. If I turn my 
eyes to a particular point in the heavens, I perceive 
a double row of worlds like a colonnade of light, 
stretching outward and still outward, and so all 
around the celestial sphere. If we could pass up 
one colonnade of starry worlds, and then another, 
and so round the sphere, exploring the handwriting 
of God on each as we pass, we should examine only 
the vestibule of the universe. Has God given me 
reason to becloud it, and opened this vast vision to 
delude me? No; though I leave this world, I shall 
see another; shall progress in knowledge; shall 


i 


. IMMORTALITY. 67 


behold wonders of wisdom on all sides; shall com- 
mune with other spirits ; and, in the fullness.of grati- 


tude and the ecstacies of joy, adore and bless the 


Almighty.” You may call this a sick man’s dream ; 
but it is logic, full of light to many a departing 
spirit. } 

Let us pass to the argument founded on the heart 
or emotional nature. There is in man an afpeiite of 
future life. Of this, all nations have left, in their 
philosophy, poetry, and institutions, indubitable traces. 
Sometimes a traveler reports a tribe without it; but 
further investigations prove him in error. Sometimes 
an individual is found who denies it; but further ac- 


‘quaintance with him proves either that he did not 


understand his own heart, or that he had rendered 
it unnatural by passion or depravity. As the fish 
points to the water and the lungs to the air, so the 
original, abiding, universal desire of another life 
points to a region beyond the grave. More than 
this, there is a presage of it. This, combined with 
desire, takes the form of hope. Thus it is found in 
the breast of every good man; it animates him in 
duty, sustains him in trial, gives him in critical 
circumstances God-like energies and impulses, and 


enables him to leave the world a conqueror. This 


presage, combined with a sense of guilt, takes the 
form of fear. The culprit is not at rest, even though 
his crime be secret and his impunity assured; not 
that he fears death, for he can brave it. Threaten- 
ing voices in the silent air, flaming daggers in the 
darkened chamber, strange tremblings in the safe 


abode, are not the results of any education or any 
7 


68 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


want of education ; they are the revealings of nature 
in all dispensations, the natural troubles of unnatural 
deeds whispering future wrath to the silent pillow. 
And no ridicule, no medicine, no philosophy, can 
rase out these written troubles of the sinner’s brain. 
This presage, combined with love, exhibits itself in a 
beautiful form at the tomb. Man, in all ages and 
under all forms of religion, even the rude savage, 
brings spices to the sepulcher; and, as he anoints 
the cold clay and washes it with his tears, he feels 
that there is something more than the clay for which 
he renders this mournful service. It is this consid- 
eration that soothes the agonies of bereavement, calls 
forth tears of joy to mingle with those of sadness, 
at the coffin builds the pyramid, and invests the 
grave with its solemnity and sacredness. Even 
when the sepulcher is empty, we feel that the child 
we once laid there is somewhere to be found. The 
voice of the shining ones to Mary, at the tomb of 
the Lord, seems to be the whisper of nature to 
every mother at the grave of her son,—“He is not 
here, he is risen.” 

I know that, among the heathen, the light of the 
sepulcher is feeble and flickering; but God requires 
no man to make for his friend a grave over which 
impenetrable and eternal darkness dwells. Grant 
that the sacred and soothing charm of the grave is 
partly due to memory and association, yet the mirror 
of the tombstone reflects something more than the 
past. It not only exhibits the departed, walking in 
the gardens which he planted, breathing in the words 
which he uttered, and acting in the principles he 


IMMORTALITY. 69 


obeyed; but shows him in more beautiful plains, 
breathing nobler utterances, and acting from loftier 
principles. Even the Indian hath visions of angels. 


“‘ Whatever crazy Sorrow saith, 
No life that breathes with human breath, 
Hath ever truly longed for death. 


’*T is life whereof our nerves are scant, 
O, life, not death, for which we pant— 
More life and fuller, that I want.” 


& 


Has God implanted in man an expectation of a 
future state? Then has he not brought himself under 
obligations to fulfill it? Both questions are an- 
swered negatively by some. 

It is said that, beyond the horizon of the Chris- 
tian world, there is a circle of outer darkness shutting 
the prospects of men within the sphere of the present 
life; that what seems the hope of a future state, is 
but the desire of prolonged existence in this, project- 
ing into Elysian fields the shadows of earthly scenes ; 
that the dread of future woe is but the natural dread 
of death, aggravated by a disordered imagination ; and 
that the hope of the bereaved mourner is but a phan- 
tom, which the distressed mind evokes for its own 
delusion. But who that has read the human heart 
can assent to these propositions? The dread of per- 
dition is very different from that of death. How 
many there are to whom the grave would be wel- 
come, could it be viewed as the end of being. Why 
is it that 

“The weariest and most loathed worldly life 


That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment 
Can lay on nature,” 


ae 
70 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. _ 


is so often endured by men who could their “quietus 
make with a bare bodkin?”’ It is the fear of some- 
thing after death that troubles the will. 

But granting that nature has implanted in man 
the presage of a future life, some deny that we can 
argue thence the existence of that state. It is alleged 
that the expectation is created for wise purposes con- 
nected with the present life; that without the hopes. 
and fears of a future world, man could not exist in 
this ; for the overflowings of human depravity would 
prove too mighty for the dikes of human law. There 
is ground for this remark. But if these hopes and 
fears are vagaries of the mind, raised within us 
merely as an invisible police, to supplement the dread 
of criminal law, we should suppose they would be | 
intense in proportion as they are needed, whereas 
they seem to be in inverse ratio to our necessities. 
Here are two young men that have been educated to- 
gether. Entering life, the one dzsodeys the monitions 
of conscience, the other obeys them; the former de- 
scends, day by day, to lower moral levels. Hence, we 
might suppose that, with every revolving sun, the ap- 
prehensions of future woe would gain force with his 
soul; but is it not otherwise? Does not his faith in 
Divine things decline, until his vision is limited almost 
to life, and he comes to regard himself at times as 
brutes that perish? How is it with the other? He 
‘ascends to higher and higher moral levels; his com- 
panions, habits, and trains of thought and feeling, 
cause him to be more and more delighted with virtue, 
until he feels that, if he could demonstrate that the 
present is the only life, he would not leave his 


IMMORTALITY. 71 


virtuous pathway. Does his faith in futurity diminish 
in proportion as«he needs not its influence? No; 
the hope of heaven glows more intensely within him 
as he advances, until he seems to share the sympathies 
of the skies and catch its jubilant song. We should 
also suppose that, if these hopes and fears were 
merely subservient to discipline, they would cease 
when they ceased to be of use. But what is the 
fact? Here are two men, the one bad, the other 
good, near their end; their powers are palsied, and 
their schemes closed; they have lost all interest in 
life, and have retired to die. One has done all the 
evil he could, the other all the good; mankind has 
nothing further to hope or fear from them, nor they 
from mankind. Now, will not delusions, that have 
been sent upon them for the purpose of discipline 
during their period of action, be withdrawn during 
their period of izaction? Why muster the invisible 
police around the dying bed? Asa general rule, you 
will find that the wicked man, who for years has 
schooled himself into skepticism, when he draws to 
his end, is alarmed. Turn to the chamber of the 
good man, who, having finished the feast of life, rises 
with gratitude from its table, and having closed his 
mission on earth, is ready to depart. Has hope, now 
no longer needed, died out from his breast? It 
glows more than ever; the painful doubts that had 
often harassed him during his life-struggle have all 
gone; “death hath lost its sting and the grave its 
victory.” It may be said that af this is for the 
deception of the spectators. But this is to assert 
that God, incompetent to govern man by ¢ruth, has 


72 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


resorted to falsehood. Farewell, science, then ; for if 
the soul is built on a lie, may not all nature be, also? 

Let us pass to the argument founded on the moral 
nature. This approves intentional right, condemns in- 
tentional wrong; its authority is supreme; it is a law 
of the universe. Hence, moral rectitude enters into 
our conception of the Creator. God, if righteous, iS 
so infinitely. An infinitely righteous ruler will, sooner 
or later, administer rewards and punishments, so as to 
render to all his subjects in exact proportion to their 
deserts. In this life, God does not so distribute re- 
wards and punishments; therefore in another he will. 
He does indeed govern upon righteous principles now ; 
nevertheless, his moral government is not perfect in 
this life. When a good man sinks into an early grave 
by the sin of his parents, is the law of physiology true 
to virtue? When an innocent party is imprisoned, 
defamed, degraded from office, or when a villain rises, 
through concealed crimes, to distinguished place, is 
the law of human relations true to virtue? When the 
Caligula is crowned, and the martyr burned, is the 
law of human government true to virtue? 

It can not be well argued that consciousness of 
rectitude makes up for the sorrows and sufferings ac- 
companying virtue, or that the reproaches of con- 
science cancel all advantages and enjoyments of a 
sinful course; for a good man, by cultivating his con- 
science, confers upon it exquisite sensibility, and, by 
careful self-examination, acquires increased capability 
of discovering his faults; while, on the other hand, 
the bad man, by neglecting the monitions of con- 
science, gradually diminishes its power, until, finally, 


IMMORTALITY. 73 


he silences it; and, by neglecting self-examination, 
becomes more and more blind to his faults. Do you 
say that, in these instances, the good are sustained by 
the hope of paradise, and the bad punished by the 
fear of perdition, you allow that nature intimates the 
imperfection of the Divine administration in this life, 
and the need of a supplemental one beyond it. 

There may be vices in the good and virtues in the 
bad ; but, in the cases supposed, does the good act 
receive its due reward, the evil one its due punish- 
ment? Vain to refer for compensation to the pleas- 
ures or pains of antecedent life, since it is not the 
policy of justice to reward or punish for actions be- 
fore they are committed. Moreover, preceding pleas- 
ures and pains are sufficiently accounted for by pre- 
ceding virtues and vices. Nor can you resolve the 
knot by intention. Are there any intentions in these 
cases to account for the results? Of his own inten- 
tions, every man is a competent judge. How numer- 
ous the cases in which acts, done with the purest 
intentions, are punished; acts done with the basest 
intentions, rewarded! One such instance is enough 
to prove that the moral administration of this life is 
not perfect. We concede the principle that, where 
general results establish a law, we are bound to sup- 
pose that exceptional cases could be reduced within 
the law if all the facts were known; this should make 
us cautious in deductions from the moral disorders of 


- the world at large, or the narratives of history; but it 


is in the best known cases that the clearest viola- 
tions are found. Let the appeal be to experience. 
Does the statesman, the minister, the patriot, receive 


74. EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


rewards corresponding to the purity of his intentions? . 
- Thomas Corwin, during the dark period of the War, 
said, “If God governs the world, I am opposed to his 
administration.” But the argument may be short- 
ened. If the moral administration.of God, in this: 
life, is perfect, then we need no other in heaven; for 
what can exceed perfection? and if every man re- 
ceives, in this life, the due reward of his deeds, then, 
if there be a future life, as he is not subject therein to 
punishment for the deeds of this, whither can he go 
but into heaven? and if he bear the same character, 
and find the same administration there as here, would 
not the prolonging of his existence here be equivalent 
to his admission into heaven? and, if under the pres- 
ent administration, obstinately wicked men grow worse 
and worse, would not the same result occur in the 
future life? Is all this according to the common rea- 
son and common heart of humanity? Ina survey of 
nations, the case is no less strong. True, history gives | 
us but an outline; the details should be filled up to 
enable us to form a perfect judgment ; but does it not 
give us enough for the conclusion? On the battle- 
fields of earth, is victory always true to the standard 
of right? Is the stream of human blood, that pours 
at the feet of a Napoleon, the measure of the recti- 
tude either of his principles or his intentions? Did 
Carthage deserve to be blotted out, or Rome deserve 
to extend her African triumphs? Are the honors of 
oppressors, and the degradations of the oppressed, 
true indices of the deserts of the respective parties? 
In the conflicts of nations, and the revolutions of 
empires, are men spared in proportion to their inno- 


IMMORTALITY. 75 


cence, and punished in proportion to their guilt? or do 
they, as in the jaws of earthquakes and the breath of 
simoons, perish by indiscriminate slaughter ? 

That, in the lapse of ages, a moral progress of 
mankind may be discerned, and the principles of a 
righteous administration traced, is clear; but is such 
administration perfect in this life? 

It is no impeachment of Divine justice to allege 
that its administration on this side of the grave is 
imperfect. It is no impeachment of Auman justice 
that its decrees are not promptly and fully executed, 
and that for a time it restrains innocent parties. The 
delay of execution may be from motives of wise policy, 
and necessary to secure the ultimate and perfect 
triumph of justice. It is easy to conceive many rea- 
sons why justice should linger in this life ; if it should 
travel step to step with transgression, duty being in all 
cases manifestly coincident with interest, it might be 
pursued from mere selfishness; and if this were the 
case, the present state would not be a suitable theater 
for the probation and display of moral character. If, 
therefore, it is easy to conceive that it may be such a 
theater, it is equally easy to suppose that justice may 
rightfully slumber for a time. If discipline and edu- 
cation be among the purposes of this life, as it is 
granted they are of its early period, there may be good 
reasons why virtue may be visited with temporary ~ 
suffering, disappointment, and persecution ; the com- 
pensation consisting in our gradual education and ex- 
altation to a higher sphere. Some argue that if the 
present administration of Divine justice is imperfect, 
we must infer that its fwtwve administration will be 


76 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


also. Mr. Hume states this objection with plausi- 
bility and force. He says: “The only safe principle 
on which we can pretend to judge of those parts of 
the universe which have not fallen under our observa- 
tion, is by concluding them to be analogous to what 
we have observed. | 
“*Of God above, or man below, 
What can we reason but from what we know?’ 

Now, the only fact we know, with respect to the 
moral government of God, is that the distribution of 
happiness and misery in human life is in a great meas- 
ure promiscuous. Is it not, then, a most extraordi- 
nary inference, from this fact, to conclude that there 
must be a future existence to correct the inequalities 
of the present scene? Would it not be more rea- 
sonable, and more agreeable to the received rules of 
philosophizing, to conclude either that the idea of a 
future state is a mere chimera, or that, if such an 
idea shall ever be realized, the distribution of happi- 
ness will continue to be as promiscuous as we have 
experienced it to be?” 

The reasoning is not valid. The premises assume 
what is not true; namely, that the present and future 
worlds are independent of each other, the administra- 
_ tion in each being complete ; whereas they are but parts 
of the same whole, as youth and age are parts of the 
present life; different stages of the same being, time 
the beginning, eternity its continuance, the adminis- 
tration of the one being the complement of that of 
the other. The youth who argues, from his impunity 
in early life, that he will not be punished in his 
manhood or old age for his youthful idleness and 


\ 


| 


IMMORTALITY. 77 


debauchery, or the criminal who argues, from the pro- 
miscuous distribution of his comforts and discomforts 
prior to his trial, to a similar distribution after his 
conviction of capital offense, makes a sad mistake. 
This argument of Hume also conceals a part of the 
truth which it professes to state. To show this 
more clearly let us syllogize it: The analogies of the 
present are our only guide in judging of the future. 
The distribution of happiness and misery in the pres- 
ent life is, in great measure, promiscuous. Therefore 
it will be so in the future. 

To the second premise, in order to make a full state- 
ment, we should add, But with a natural tendency to 
a righteous adjustment hindered by accidental forces. 
Adding these two elements to the proposition, we 
may reverse the conclusion. For the tendencies, be- 
ing natural, will act steadily and permanently; the 
hinderances, being accidental, will, in course of time, 
cease ; so that, if man were immortal in the present 
life, time would ultimately arrange all things in the 
order of righteousness, gathering to virtue all power 
and happiness, and dooming to vice weakness, lamen- 
tation, and woe. And the result must be hastened by 
a change of the venue to a higher court. 

It is, we conceive, in Strict conformity with the 
rules of philosophizing to conclude that there is a 
Supreme Court in which the countless unlitigated 
causes of time are docketed, and the innumerable 
claims of justice, that can never be asserted here, 
shall be finally heard. 

In 1829, Mr. Airy found that the distance of 
Uranus from the sun was continually varying. Le 


~ 


78 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Verrier compared all the variations, and concluded 


_ that they could only be accounted for by the exist- 


ence of a world ‘beyond, and that the greatest of 
Uuranus’s variations marked the period of its con- 
junction with that unknown world. Taking for 
granted that its distance from the sun corresponds 
with that of the next interior planet, he estimated 
its distance at twice that of Uranus; then by the 
law that the squares of the distances are as the 
cubes of the times, he computed its annual revolution 
at two hundred and twenty years. Supposing the 
plane of its orbit to correspond with that of Uranus, 
he determined the point of space in which it was at 
that moment to be found. He wrote to a friend who 
commanded a powerful teloscope, telling him where 
to point in order to see a new world. The result 
verified his calculations. Thus a philosopher in his 
study, with the deviations of a world from its proper 
path and the laws of the universe for the elements 


- of his calculation, pierces thousands of millions of 


miles into space and sees with his eye of science an 
unknown world. Thus, with the moral deviations of 
this world and the eternal laws of justice for the ele- 
ments of our calculation, can we not pierce eternity, 
and behold a future world? 

4. An argument of no small force is derived from 
the dignity of our nature. How mean the azms of life, 
if we believed that we should perish at death! In the 
language of an eloquent but erratic writer: “ My fath- 
ers will be to me only as the ground out of which my 
bread corn is grown; dead, they are like the rotten 
mold of the earth, their memory of small concern to 


6 


IMMORTALITY 79 


me. Posterity, I shall care nothing for the future gen- 
erations of mankind. J am one atom in the trunk 
of a tree, and care nothing for the roots below or 
the branch above. I shall sow such seed as will 
bear harvest at once. I shall know no higher law. 
Passion enacts my statutes to-day; to-morrow, ambi- 
tion revises the statutes ; and these are my sole legis- 
lators. Morality will vanish, expediency take its 
place. Heroism will be gone, and instead of it will 
be the brute valor of the he-wolf, the brute cunning 
of the she-fox, the rapacity of the vulture, and the 
headlong daring of the wild bull; but the cool, calm 
courage which, for truth’s sake and for love’s sake, 
looks death firmly in the face, and then wheels into 
line ready to be slain, that will be a thing no longer 
heard of. Affection will be a momentary delight in 
other men. The friendship which lays down its life 
for father, mother, wife, or child, for dear ones ten- 
derly beloved—which sucks the poison from their 
wounds; the philanthropy which toils and provides 
for the friendless, the unlovely, and the wicked,—that 
will only be a story of old time, to be laughed at as 
men laugh at the tale of the Grecian boy, who loved 
the new moon as his heavenly bride.” 

Under such a view, how poor the joys of life, and 
how mournful the prospect of death! How it not 
only robs life, but degrades death, disenchants the 
corpse, and turns to mockery our mourning and our 
mausoleums! As the same writer says: “ The atheist 
sits down at the coffin of his only child—a rose-bud 
daughter, whose heart death slowly ate away; the 
pale lilies of the valley which droop with fragrance 


80 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


upon that lifeless heart are flowers of mockery to 
him; their beauty is a cheat. They give not back 
his child for whom the sepulchral monster opens its 
remorseless jaws. The hopeless father looks down on 
the face of his girl, silent, not sleeping, cold, dead. 
The effacing fingers have put out the eye; yet mar- 
ble beauty still lingers there, and love, a father’s love, 
continually haunts the disenchanted house. Atheism 
can not speed it away; affection has its law, which 
no impiety of thought annuls. He looks beyond— 
the poor, sad man. It is only solid darkness he stares 
upon. No rainbow beautifies that cloud; there is 
thunder in it, not light. Night is behind—without a 
star. His dear one has vanished, her light put out 
by thunderous death ; not a sparklet left. There is no 
daughter for him ; but, alas, he is a father still; yet no 
father to her. For her whose life the blameless baby 
took long years gone by, there is no mortal husband, 
no immortal mother. Child and mother are equal 
now; each is nothing, but nothing. ‘I also shall 
soon vanish,’ exclaims the man, ‘blotted out by dark- 
ness, and become nothing; my bubble broke, my ms 
life all gone, with its bitter tears for the child and 
the mother who ‘bore her; its bridal and birthday 
joys, which glittered a moment—how bright they 
were, then slipped away !—my sorrows all unrequited, 
my hopes a cruel cheat. Ah me! the stars, slowly 
gathering into one flock, are a sorry sight—each a 
sphere tenanted, perhaps, by the same bubbles, the 
same cheats, the same despair!’”’ . 
Thank God, this is not the natural theology of the 
human heart! Go to the old grave-yard, where you 


i IMMORTALITY. SI 


- 


first learned how dreadful death is, and your eyes 
were taught to send forth tears at the mention of 
the Psalmist’s words, “ Lover and friend hast thou 
put far from me, and mine acquaintance into dark- 
ness,’ and ask, Is this the end of those sweet ones, 
whose heads fond parents laid upon down and cur- 
tained with damask, whose eyes sparkled with gen- 
ius, whose lips were full of truth, whose feet were 
swift on errands of mercy, and whose hands- were 
outstretched to the poor? O, with what heroic strug- 
gles, with what repentant sighs, with what cries of 
agony, with what hidden grief, with what desolated 
hearths, are these green graves associated! With 
what undying hopes, too! Did never your mother, 
returning from the death-chamber of a child of sor- 
row, draw you close to her breast, and tell you, with 
subdued tones, how the broken heart of the sufferer 
was healed, and how her parting blessing fell softly 
on the heads of her little ones, and how unearthly 
whispers passed her cold lips, and how, when she 
ceased to whisper, she gave the promised signal that 
her departing spirit greeted the coming angels? I 
know, indeed, that our hopes are often shocked at the 
tomb. To diminish the shock, it is usual, and it is 
well, to reflect on the various forms through which 
animated beings pass without destruction. In insect 
life we have first the egg, giving no signs of vitality ; 
next the caterpillar ; then the chrysalis, a sort of tomb, 
from which, after a period of torpor, the animal comes 
forth with wings. Still more to the purpose are the 
changes we ourselves have undergone. Once we 
existed without seeing or hearing, or eating or drink- 


82 EVIDENCES OF REVELATICN. 


ing, or even breathing, imprisoned as in a dark cave. 
If in that narrow house it had been revealed to us 
that we were soon to enter another state of life; that 
all around us were brothers and sisters and friends, of 
whom we knew not, and who knew not of us; that 
in contact with us, on all sides, was a being who 
loved us, supplied us with sources of life, and antici- 
pated our coming wants; that in a short time we 
should be launched into a new world, where we 
should live in new forms; should walk, breathe, 
bask in sunlight, hear melody, gain knowledge, com- 
mune with nobler beings; in fine, should enter a 
world beautiful enough and a sphere of thought 
grand enough for the angels of God,—how incredu- 
lous should we have been! Still more, if assured 
that we were separated from that world by a wall 
scarce an inch in thickness. If now, on all sides of 
us, is an undiscovered world, and just before us a 
state of existence surpassing in magnitude all our 
conceptions ; if this system of arteries and nerves -is 
but a temporary arrangement, this world a matrix, 
and the throes of death a birth,—all this is analogous 
to what we have experienced. I may be told that 
the analogy fails, because our previous existence was 
connected with a bodily organization. True, but we 
know not but other and more ethereal forms await 
the departing spirit. 

How inferior our energies without the doctrine ‘of 
immortality! -How low should we sink if we stood 
alone! How it expands the vision and enlarges the 
heart, and quickens the conscience and rouses all the 
powers, tu corsider our relations to father, mother, 


IMMORTALITY, 83 


friend, to the nations, to all mankind; to look back 
along the procession of millions on millions of men 
who have lived before us, marshaled by the God of 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, reaching up to the crea- 
ting hand, and galvanizing us as with a Divine bat- 
tery ; and to look forward to all the millions that are 
to come between whom and the generations gone, 
we stand as a connecting link—the legatees of the 
precious knowledge and wisdom and memories of the 
past, the legators of all the future! Now, let these 
relations be extended to all worlds, and beyond the 
ages into eternity, and what a sense of responsibility, 
of dignity, of hope, does it awaken, so that we feel a 
Divine fire within us, and a Divine law upon us, and 
we touch our powers as parts of the eternal forces of 
the universe—ourselves linked to the heavenly hosts, 
and co-workers with Almighty God! 

O, God, thou moldest the earth into forms of en- 
rapturing beauty ; “thou visitest the earth, and greatly 
enrichest it with the river of God; thou preparest them 
corn when thou hast so provided for it; thou waterest 
the ridges thereof; thou settlest the furrows thereof; 
thou makest it soft with showers; thou blessest the 
springing thereof; thou crownest the year with thy 
goodness ; and thy paths drop fatness.’ Thou, who 
dost renew the natural world, hast thou no Spring for 
the moral? Is life a mystery, or a probation and pre- 
paration for a better state? Almighty Father, where 
are thy children who made this wilderness to blossom 
as the rose, our fathers who trusted in thee, our 
mothers who breathed thy name with their dying lips? 
Hast thou not folded ee to thy loving bosom? 


> 


— 


84 RV IDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Pleasant it is to stand in the temple of nature, 
with its floor carpeted with green, and its roof fretted 
with stars, and its gallery of mountains charged with 
heavenly music, and, while the time-piece of the skies 
measures off our days, to listen to the voices of the 


reason and the heart speaking of a Better Land. 


Iv. 
MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. 


T having been shown that we are under govern- 

ment, that we shall live hereafter, and that in the 
future world we shall receive rewards and punish- 
ments for the deeds of this life, we next inquire by 
what rule these will be bestowed. We answer, by the 
rule of right. The argument of Butler is both able 
and satisfactory. Conceding that the moral govern- 
ment of God here is not perfect, he yet maintains 
that the principles of a righteous government are dis- 
cernible in the course of providence, by the following 
arguments: 

1. It is the only rule which seems natural and 
suitable to the human mind. 

2. Prudence is rewarded, and imprudence pun- 
ished; and, as these are of the zature of virtue, their 
treatment affords a presumption that virtue will be 
rewarded and vice punished. 

3. Vicious actions are, to a great degree, punished 
as mischievous to society, either by actual inflictions 
or apprehensions of them. And, as these punish-| 
ments are necessary to the preservation of society, 
they are as natural as society itself. God has thus 
put men under bonds to inflict them. Although good 


men are sometimes persecuted, and bad men rewarded 


86 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


by society, these things are not necessary, and are 
done under misapprehensions which the progress of 
truth dissipates. 

4. Virtue, as such, is rewarded, and vice, as such, 
punished. The effect of vice upon the mind is to 
create uneasiness in all degrees up to the keenest’ re- 
morse; the effect of virtue is to give tranquillity, from 
complacency up to the highest satisfaction. The fears 
of a worse world in the one case, and the hopes of a 
better in the other, are superadded to these feelings. 
Vice brings upon the offender popular disapprobation, 
odium, even punishment. The tyrant is often driven 
from his throne, more from a sense of zs wrongs than 
of the zzjuries he has inflicted, and private resentment 
is more frequently occasioned by a consideration of a 
wrong zztention than of a pernicious action. Where 
criminals are brought to justice for offenses to society, 
the vigor of the prosecution and the rigor of the pun- 
ishment are determined by the turpitude ascribed to 
the offender’s character or designs. 

5. There is a natural tendency in vice to produce 
higher suffering, and in virtue to produce greater 
satisfaction, than they actually do. Virtue is contin- 
ually gaining upoh vice, so that it is clear that, if its 
forces were united, codperative, proportionate to the 
opposing ones, and favored with sufficient length of 
time, its victory would be inevitable. All these ad- 
vantages are to be expected in the future state, so 
that, should the perfect triumph of virtue beyond the 
grave occur, it will only be the effect of tendencies 
already at work, different, not in /zzd, but only in de- 
gree from what we see here. As the hinderances to 


MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. 87 


the complete triumph, of virtue here are accidental, 


we may presume they will be removed in the future © 
world; and as the tendencies are natural, we may 
presume they will continue. 

This argument, according to my mind, may be 
compressed into a very small compass. If God’s laws 
in this world were indifferent to virtue, then would 
human character have no relation to human happi- 
ness; a position which no one will take. If they 
were on the side of vice, then must we violate them 
to secure prosperity. But who, in order to secure a 
healthy and vigorous body, deems it necessary to in- 
dulge in idleness, intemperance, and debauchery ? 
Who, to secure permanent riches, honor, and power, 
thinks it best to lie, steal, and cheat—to dishonor 
his friends, sell his kindred, and betray his country ? 
Who, to insure mental improvement and peace of soul, 
thinks it indispensable to avoid all right and commit 
all wrong? The laws of society are the judgments of 
the legislature as to the general course of providence. 


_Do statesmen, with a view to secure the permanence, 


prosperity, and harmony of states, enact the contra- 


' dictories of the Ten Commandments? Was ever a 


nation or tribe heard of that ordained such laws? 
Could such a one be found, how long would it last ? 
A few days of conflict, and naught would be left of it 
but corpses and coagulated blood. If God is not in- 
different to morals, and if he is against vice, he must 
be for virtue. 

It is not at all surprising that a bad cause should 
sometimes prosper in a wicked world; but its suc- 
cess is but temporary. Its monuments, built on the 


- 


- 88 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


sand, are swept away by the first flood. A king 
may kill a prophet; but, after years have revolved, 
his knees may smite one against the other as he says, — 
“It is John whom I beheaded, he is risen from the 
dead.” Wrong, when pressed into the service of 
right, hinders instead of advancing it. Uzzah ille- 
gally endeavored to help forward the ark; but he 
stopped it on the way with his own corpse. Brutus 
killed Czesar to give liberty to Rome; but he ce- 
mented her bondage with his own blood. Henry II 
killed Becket to weaken the Pope; but was whipped 
at Becket’s grave by infuriated monks. Jehoram 
wished to secure his crown by destroying his broth- 
ers; Athaliah wished to perpetuate her reign by 
murdering her children,—but both put magazines be- 
neath their own thrones. The English Common- 
wealth sought to secure liberty by decapitating 
Charles I; but they only laid more firmly the 
foundations of the monarchy. A wicked act may, ~ 
indeed, achieve a good end, but generally the suc- 
cess of truth in such a case is a calamity; it puts 
it on slippery places, from which it is often for a 
‘time cast down. The triumphing of the wicked is | 
short, the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment. 
“Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, 
and his head reach unto the clouds, yet shall he 
perish forever, like his own dung.” 

Men know that they never need despair of a right- | 
eous cause. Though unpopular, opposed, insulted, 
rendered criminal by an iniquitous law and condemned 
by an infamous magistracy, it will live. Influence, 
wealth, passion, and votes may for a season be against 


MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. 89 


it, for God will not interfere with human instru- 
mentality ; men may choose wickedness, silence con- 
science, blind reason, and harden heart; but they can 
not destroy right. It is in harmony with nature; the 
stars in their courses fight for it. The whole his- 
tory of the race, despite the darkness which rests 
upon it, is an illustration of this remark. The ante- 
diluvian world resisted and ridiculed Noah; but he 
sailed safely over the flood. Athens poisoned Soc- 
rates; but the poisoner lived to confess her shame, 
and the martyr died to have a resurrection of glory. 
Haman built a gallows for Mordecai; but hung on it» 
himself. Nero murdered Seneca; but now the tyrant 
is execrated, and the philosopher revered. Jew and 
Gentile combined to slay Jesus Christ ; but his Cross 
is not the emblem of death, but of salvation. Priest 
and prince joined hand in hand against apostles; but 
the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. 
A rabble may seize a Huss, and, crowning him with 
pictures of devils, may lead him out to burn, and 
then sprinkle his ashes in the Rhine; but those ashes 
shall be the germs of a thousand reformers. 


“Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
The eternal years of God are hers.” 


Men sometimes grow discouraged at the slow progress 
and many reverses of righteousness ; but we may ex- 
pect virtue, seeing she is here militant, to meet always 
with difficulty and sometimes with defeat. Generally, 
however, the difficulties are magnified and the slow- 
ness of thé advance overstated. 

Let us take an illustration from modern history. 


go EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


It is but a few years since that the first efforts were 
made to abolish the slave-trade. In 1785, Mr. Clark- 
son wrote his prize essay on the subject in the Uni- 
versity of Cambridge. A few years revolved, and he 
had enlisted Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Sharpe in the 
cause. When at length it rose above the public 
sneer, it aroused the most earnest opposition. Preju- 
dice, with coat of mail, brandished its staff like a 
weavers beam. Logic came forth, with quiver full of 
quibbles. Commerce brought forward the heavy artil- 
lery of statistics, crying, It will arrest important 
speculations ; and Manufactures exclaimed, It will 
sink the price of chains and thumbscrews. Petition 
after petition was laid upon the table of the Com- 
mons, and appeal after appeal fell dead from the press. 
When action was at length proposed, it was not to 
destroy, but regulate, the trade—to fix the numbers 
of slaves by the tonnage of the vessel. When an 
advanced step was advocated, a storm of abuse drove 
many abolitionists from the field. In 1789, Parlia- 
ment postponed action on the subject ; in 1791, it 
voted the question down ; in 1792, the Commons pro- 
posed gradual abolition, but the lords postponed the 
pill; in 1793, the question was again lost, and disap- 
pointment fell like a palsy on the chief champion. 
His body gave way; his memory, his hearing, and 
even his power of articulation, failed ; his friends in 
crowds forsook him; but the cause survived, cham- 
pioned now by Wilberforce, who tried the question 
year after year, from 1794 to 1805, when the cause 
seemed lost. But God raised up Clarkson again, 
In 18c6, a new cabinet was formed, and in 1807 


MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. gI 


the slave-trade was abolished, the United States hav- 
ing previously set the example. Still, slaves were 
beneath the British flag, and Christian conscience 
could not be content until the word of a mighty 
nation went across the Atlantic that slavery should 
exist in her colonies no longer. 

The struggle in this country was far more fearful ; 
for greater wealth, political power, talent, and social 
influence were combined in favor of the wrong, and 
the venerated Constitution shielded it. A few years 
before the war, I hazarded the prediction that, in 
less than fifty years, slavery would be abolished in 
the United States, in presence of a very able clerical 
friend, who instantly said, “No; it will be stronger 
then than it is to-day.” My prediction was founded, 
not upon a study of current events, nor a foresight 
of coming ones; but upon a deep conviction that 
God’s government is moral, and that therefore events 
must move in the groove of the moral law. His pre- 
diction was one to which all events then seemed to 
concur. I need not recount the history to show 
how Right, like a Prometheus, called down fire from 
heaven to animate the slumbering conscience of the 
nation; and how infernal war and repeated disaster 
trained the unwilling Government, and compelled it to 
break every chain and let the oppressed go free; and 
how error and evil passions drove the South to such 
a course as compelled the nation to go down deep 
into the Constitution to secure forever the liberty 
of the emancipated. He who can read this history 
and not believe the providence of God is on the side 
of the moral law, must be blind. An ancient said, 

2 


O2 7% EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


“Time and I against any other two.” Rather say, 
Right and I against any other two. ; 

But I pass to develop an argument which Butler 
waives ; namely, that founded upon our moral nature, 
sometimes called the conscience, or the moral sense. 
That there is such a nature is evident from the words | 
right and wrong, with others of like nature, found in 
all languages; from our own experience; from the. 
system of moral instruction among all people, and 
from the laws of all States. By whatever name it 
may be called, we ascribe to it three functions—that 
of lawgiver, of monitor, and of executive. It isa law 
written on the heart, a monitor trying our actions by — 
this law, an executive carrying out its decisions in 
reproof or approbation. 

That this moral law is substantially written on the 
heart, is evident. Where can you find a man who 
supposes it is right either to hate God or a fellow- 
‘man; to disobey the Creator, or injure his unoffending 
creatures? Where, indeed, can you find one who does 
not admit that God should be loved and obeyed, and 
man respected and blessed? It is true that natural 
conscience is imperfect; it needs enlightenment. 
For example, men often have false notions of God. 
If they regard him as a Jupiter or a Juggernaut, they 
may become vain in their imaginations, their foolish 
hearts may be darkened, and they may be given up to 
work uncleanness with greediness. Let the whole 
earth be assembled to enact a moral law, and made 
acquainted with their relations to God, and let it be 
‘proposed to enact, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
-God with all thy heart,” would not every hand be 


MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. 93 


raised for its adoption, and would not every heart 
perceive that it was but an extension of that already 
written in the breast ? 

Again: Men may have imperfect notions of their 
relations to their fellow-men. Unless men have con- 
templated God as a common Father, and all men as 
his offspring, made of one blood, they may not re- 
gard the law of love as applicable to the whole race. 
Moreover, from mistaken views they may have wrong 
ideas of duty. A father may, from parental love; so 
indulge his son as to ruin him; a husband, from love 
to his wife, may introduce other wives to his house- 
hold, with a view to lighten her labors; a mother 
may deem it her duty to expose her deformed infant 
to death, or to cast it into the Ganges ; a brother may 
deem it fraternal duty to compel a widowed sister to 
be lashed to the corpse of her husband, and to burn 
upon the funeral pile; a son may be instigated by 
paternal love to expose his father to death, with a 
view of releasing him from the intolerable woes of 
age, and hastening his passage to paradise; a man, 
whose family are suffering, may deem it his duty to 
steal; and a witness may think it right to lie in a 
righteous cause. But in all these cases, the error is 
in the intellect. Conscience is a judge; but, though 
a judge be of perfect integrity and have a perfect 
law, his decisions can not be zzg#¢ unless he have a 
correct view of all the facts in the case. Because a 
faculty can not do all things, we are not to deny 
that it can do any. Reason is by no means unerring, 
yet all men have it, and it is invaluable. 

Paul acted in all good conscience when he went 


94 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


from province to province to kill the saints. Suppos- 
ing his premises true, that they were heretics, and 
that it was right for a government to remove heresy 
by the sword, he was doing his duty. - Conscience 
must be informed. How far a man is guilty, when he 
acts with a good conscience under a wrong view of 
things, depends on how far he is able to obtain a right 
one. When conscience is enlightened, its decisions 
are right. This faculty needs to be cultivated. If it 
be neglected, it loses power, both discerning and moni- 
tory; its perception is well-nigh lost, and its voice 
well-nigh extinguished by appetite, passion, ‘and self- 
interest. The genius and the mortal instruments are 
in conflict, and the state of man suffers. Like to a 
little kingdom, it suffers the return of an insurrection, 
and, unfortunately, the insurgents generally beat. But 
though men do what they would not, yet they con- 
sent unto the law that it is good. Even though re- 
peated disobedience bring them into captivity to sin, 
yet they know enough to feel their chains. 

The executive power of conscience, when the 
violation of its monitions is clear, is awful. Even 
though, by a course of wickedness, it may be checked 
for a time, it usually asserts its power in the end: 


“Conscience, the torturer of the soul unseen, 
Does fiercely brandish a sharp sting within; 
Severe decrees may keep our souls in awe, 
But to our thoughts what edict can give law? 
Even you, yourself, to your own breast shall tell 
Your crimes, and your own conscience be your hell.” 


~ 


Charles IX of France, who ordered the bloody scenes 
of St. Bartholomew, had a color in his cheeks and a 
fierceness in his looks which nature could not give; 


“— 
MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. 95 


his slumbers were unsound, and he often awoke from 
them in awful agonies ; he heard hideous groans and 
threatening voices in the air, and, on one occasion, 
supposing his enemies were upon him, sent his guards 
to attack what were the mere phantoms of his soul. 
No music could compose his troubled spirit; no false 
doctrine of royal prerogative, no confession or shrift, 
could calm his mind; he sunk out of life through a 
scene of woe that can scarce be depicted. 

Perhaps the best way of impressing men with the 
fact of their moral nature, is to consider what we 
should be without it. The idea of right is, next to 
that of God, the noblest we can conceive. Take this 
away from a man, and, the more mighty his powers, 
the more dreadful. What though he penetrate all 
mysteries, though he measure the heavens with his 
astronomical rod, and weigh the planets in his men- 
tal balances; what though he command all wisdom, 
combine all beauteous forms, and utter all the lan- 
guages of earth in the harmonies of heaven,—with- 
out a sense of right he would be no man, only an 
awful brute, more to be dreaded than the tiger of the 
jungle, because more powerful. We could admire and 
wonder at him as we do at the storm or the earth- 
quake, but we should be utterly incapable of feeling 
for him either respect or affection—as well love or 
venerate a steam-engine. Such a being could feel 
neither approbation nor disapprobation ; murder would 
awaken in him no other feeling than prayer. Though 
he might move rocks with his lyre, he could never 
awaken within his breast the music of a good con- 
science; though he could remove mountains, he could 


96 | EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


not be just; though he might work ruin, he could 
never feel remorse ; though he might revel in sensu- 
ality, he could feel no aspiration after goodness. 

We sometimes see illustrations of this. The 
books describe several. I select one, for example, 
from Dr. Haslam’s work—a lad, of ten years of age, 
who, with perfectly sound intellect, became, in early 
youth, so uncontrollable that it was necessary to keep 
him under guard. “On the first interview I had with 
him,” says the doctor, “he contrived, after two or 
three minutes’ acquaintance, to break a window and 
tear the frill of my shirt. He was an unrelenting foe to 
all china, glass, and crockery-ware. Whenever they 
came within his reach, he shivered them instantly. 
In walking the street, his keeper was compelled to 
take the wall, as he uniformly broke the windows if he 
could get near them; and this operation he performed 
‘so dexterously, and with such safety to himself, that he 
never cut his fingers. To tear lace, and destroy the 
finer textures of female ornament, seemed to gratify 
him exceedingly, and he seldom walked out without 
finding an occasion of indulging this propensity. He 
never. became attached to any inferior animal—a 
benevolence so common to the generality of children. 
To these creatures his conduct was that of a brute. 
He oppressed the feeble, and avoided the society of 
those more powerful than himself. Considerable prac- 
tice had taught him that he was the cat's master, 
an whenever the luckless animal approached him, 
he plucked out its whiskers with wonderful rapidity, 
saying, ‘I must have her beard off’ After this oper- 
ation, he commonly threw the creature on the fire or 


MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. Q7 


through the window. If a /t//e dog came, he kicked 
it; if a large one, he would not notice it. When he 
was spoken to he usually said, ‘I do not choose to an- 
swer. When he perceived any one who appeared to 
observe him attentively, he always said, ‘Now I will 
look unpleasant.’ The usual games of children af- 
- forded him no amusement; whenever boys were at 
play, he never joined them. Indeed, the most singu- 
lar part of his character was, that he appeared incapa- 
ble of forming a friendship with any one. He felt no 
consideration for sex, and would as readily kick or 
bite a girl as a boy. Of any kindness shown him he 
was equally insensible. He would receive-an orange 
as a present, and throw it in the face of the donor. 
When, on a certain occasion, he was conducted 
through an insane hospital, and a mischievous pa- 
tient was pointed out to him, who was more strictly 
confined than the rest, he said to his attendant, ‘This 
would be the right place for me. He often expressed 
a wish to die, and gave, as a reason, that God had not 
made him like other children.” In this case there 
was no symptom of diseased action of the brain. 

This exception proves the rule. In the light of it, 
we can see that man is made with a moral nature—a 
knowledge of right, an approbation of it, and an im- 
pulse toward it. We see, too, the value of this na- 
ture, and its necessity to human society. Would you, 
for all the world, assume the place of that child, even 
if you could have the genius of Homer, the reason 
of Aristotle, and the philosophy of Bacon added to 
his character? Had he possessed the talents of a 
Napoleon, and the power of an archangel, would he 


Ww 


98 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. ~ 


have taken any higher place in the scale of being? 
Would he have been less miserable, less horrible? 
Nay, all the more.so. His mighty powers, without 
moral guidance, would have been put forth under wild 
impulses, and he would have moved through the earth 
as a rational wild beast—the terror and abhorrence 
of mankind, unless restrained by violence. 

This loss of conscience may be produced artifi- 
cially. A pastor, at Cincinnati, gives the following 
case substantially. An accomplished woman, who, 
though deeply convicted and repeatedly warned, stub- 
bornly refused to bow her lofty spirit to the sense of 
right, preferring, like Lucifer, her own will to God’s, 
until her conscience has become well-night extinct, is 
laid upon a sick-bed. She welcomes pain, disappoint- 
ment, disease, hoping that they will restore her moral 
sensibility. She would fain lie down on a bed of 
burning coals, if she could quicken her moral sense. 
Alas! conscience has been upon the live coals, while 
the body has been indulged. She would welcome the 
furies of Orestes, if only she could hear again the 
voice of the silenced monitor. “Bring me,” she cries, 
“the Bible that I have scorned, hold it before my 
dying eyes; search for its most withering denuncia- 
tions, read them slowly in my ear. Let me see the 
picture of that mother, whose dying hand I feel still 
upon my head, whose dying prayer still rings in my 
ear. Talk to me of Sinai, of God, of sin. Wake up 
the sense of iniquity within me; fear not, spare not. 
Get my shroud made, put it round me; yes, now I 
hope to feel. Soon I shall be dead, laid out a corpse. 
But, oh, I can not feel—yes, I can feel pain of body, 


MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. 99 


void of soul. My reason is clear, imagination strong, 
memory ready; my heart is mighty to love and to 
hate; but my moral powers are a blank. I can not 
repent, can not draw near to God, can not feel sin, 
can not feel either impulse to good or sorrow for evil. 
Something is wrong within me—all is wrong. Make 
my coffin, and bring it to my bedside. Now, then, 
shall I feel. Sarah, soon wilt thou be dead, and laid 
in this coffin; soon will the clods of the valley fall 
upon thee. Let me strike the coffin with my knuck- 
les that my eyes may catch the sound. O, that I 
could feel—that I could have remorse, that sweet 
word! I go to God, who is a consuming fire to me, 
but I fear not ; I go to hell, laughing at its flames.” 
This woman has felt the greatest loss—the loss of 
that which gave her nature its dignity, its noblest 
susceptibilities, its highest rights. She is cut off 
from the moral world as much as she would be from 
-the natural if her body no longer felt the power of 
gravitation. | 
In contrast with this, take another case, related to 
me by a Columbus pastor... A beautiful woman lies 
dying. She is in a mansion; her halls are hung with 
tapestry; her glasses sparkle with vermilion ; her 
floors are spread with velvet carpets; her couch is 
down; her curtains are damask ; attendants sprinkle 
her with perfumes, and lull her with music; her 
physicians strive to soften the pangs of parting life, 
and strew with poppies the avenues of death; but she 
tosses from side to side, crying at dawn, “ Would God 
it were night!” and, at night, “Would God it were 
morning!” Her countenance is horrible, her shrieks 


100 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


are piercing. The clergyman approaches. “ O,” she 


cries, “it is too late, I am a wretch undone! O, you 
know not the depth of my sin! I have ruined souls, 
destroyed fortunes, blasted character, scattered fami- 
lies. I have spread disease and moral desolation and 
death around me. I can not tell you what a wretch I 
have been. I am a serpent, a Boan Upas, a moral 
cholera.” “I know it.” “Well, I am glad you do, 
but you can not know the whole. I have blasphemed 
God ; opened the mouth of hell to scores, and grown 
rich upon the ruin of others.” “I know it,” responds 
the clergyman. “O, then, Iam relieved. But you do 
not know all; there is blood, there is blood on my 
garments, blood on these hands, blood in these beams, 
blood all over me, soaked into my soul. I have mur- 
dered, by the hands of others, who have suffered what 
I should. O, remorse, remorse!” “I know it all,” 
says the clergyman. “Then, I am relieved. But you 
can not know it all; I can not tell it, language is not 
black enough. O God, is there mercy for me? I will 
do or suffer any thing.” Awful as such a case is, it 
is infinitely better than the preceding. That remorse 
shows that the spirit is still human, that it retains its 
highest attributes, its capability of moral discern- 
ment, moral impulsion, and self-rebuke, and, conse- 
quently, of moral improvement; and desperate, as the 
case may be, it may be saved yet so as by fire. But, 
O God! what can be done when the conscience is 
seared as with a hot iron? 

Man, then, has a moral nature, which, when prop- 
erly cultivated and informed, is always on the side of 
right. Let a jury decide upon a case which they 


Pe oe 


a 


MORALE GOVERNMENT OF GOD. IOI: 


thoroughly understand, and upon which they can de- 
cide without passion, interest, or prejudice, and their 
verdict will be right. Let a populace be fully in- 
formed upon a moral question, in which they are 
swayed neither by interest, sophistry, or passion, 
and they will decide correctly ; and, as they are less 
likely to be thus swayed than an individual, it is said 
that man, though depraved in the individual is up- 
right in the mass. Hence, too, that other saying, 
Vox populi, vox Dei. The judgment of the universal 
conscience, when properly informed on a moral ques- 
tion, is right. Now, he that formed the eye, shall he 
not see? he that gave man knowledge, shall he not 
know? he that gave man a moral nature, has he not 
a moral nature himself? Would he set up such an 
organization in the soul as the conscience, if he were 
not himself conscientious? If he be moral, being in- 
finite, his government must be perfect. Hence, the 
Judge of the whole earth will do right. 

Here, again, nature and revelation harmonize. 
God appeals to our sense of right, and allows us to 
judge himself by it. He says, by the prophet, “ Are 
not my ways equal, are not your ways unequal? saith 
the Lord.” And Christ says, ‘Why even of your- 
selves judge ye not what is right ?” 

I can not forbear to give these remarks a practical 
direction. Parents, are you sufficiently careful of the 
moral character of your children? Strive, pray, agon-— 
ize for their moral improvement. You are careful to 
clothe, shelter, feed them ; you watch over their sick 
pillows; you rush to the rescue when they are in 
danger or distress. ’Tis well. But the body is but 


* 


102 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


the casket, the character is the jewel. Better that 
the child die than grow up wicked. You value his 
intellect ; you watch its unfolding; you rejoice over 
every indication of his mental progress; you are 
careful to train his mind. It is well. But there is 
something better. When you send your son to 
school, ask what will be the culture bestowed upon 
his conscience, what spirit he will be likely to 
breathe, what examples to follow, what moral princi- 
ples and habits to acquire. How many send their 
children to college simply that they may shine, and 
select the institution merely with a view to the reputa- 
tion it may confer! The greater the ec/at, the bet- 
ter, if there be no moral risk to run. In choosing a 
profession or companion for their children, how many 
think only of money, honor, social position, overlook- 
ing entirely that which is above all things! How 
many have driven their sons from the ministry be- 
cause it did not promise wealth or social elevation ! 
How many have denied their daughters praying me- 
chanics, and given them to polished rogues! 

Let the young fre, above all things, their moral 
nature. What power, what knowledge, what success, 
can atone for ‘intemperance, or ingratitude, or dishon- 
esty, or disgrace? There is genius and learning in 
many a penitentiary; but men turn away from the 
brightest genius shining through the grates of a 
felon’s prison. There is, too, many a bright genius 
out of the penitentiary, on whom a wise father would 
shut his doors as on a robber, and from whom he 
would hide his daughters as from a pestilence. Care- 
fully educate your moral nature. Many who rise 


MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. 103 


early, sit up late, and eat the bread of carefulness, in 
order to store the memory, cultivate the taste, and 
train the reason, hedge up no regular hours to culti- 
vate the moral nature. Yet how far superior is the 
latter to the former ; how much greater the ease with 
which it may be cultivated; how much stronger the 
assurance of success, in its culture; how much 
grander the results! 

True greatness, enduring greatness, is moral great- 
ness. The integrity of the elder Brutus, of Fabricius, 
of Cincinnatus, has conferred more glory on. Rome 
than the sword of Cesar, the tongue of Cicero, or 
the melody of Virgil. Socrates is the glory of 
Greece—of pagan antiquity. He stands head and 
shoulders above all the rest of the philosophic hosts, 
because he was pre-eminently the moral philosopher. 
The poet has said, “An honest man is the noblest 
work of God;’ and the world responds to the senti- 
ment. This response is human nature’s tribute of 
homage to its highest attribute; that which, properly 
cultured, brings the powers of the soul into harmony, 
girds it for noble conflict, brings it into intimate rela- 
tion to God, gives it strength in every difficulty, pa- 
tience in every pain, a might that all the powers of 
darkness can not crush, and a majesty like unto that 
of the angels of God. The idea of right may be 
misapplied, the impulse of the conscience may be 
misleading, and its approbation misdirected ; still, 
that idea is the greatest of all, that impulse of more 
value than the universe, and that approbation the 
richest reward that can be enjoyed. 

However undeveloped and unenlightened a man 


104 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


may be, if he have reason he may enter the halls of 
learning ; he has within him the germ of a Newton, 
the elements of all intellectual processes. So if a 
man have a moral nature, he may become a citizen 
of the heavenly Jerusalem; he has the highest ele- 
ment of virtue, and may aspire to the holiness, the 
anthems, and the seats of angels. The child at the 
breast, that has but just caught the idea of right, is 
a higher being than the ancient archangel would be 
if that idea were taken from his breast. | 

If you had your choice between derangement of 
reason and derangement of conscience, is there one 
so debased as to prefer the latter? 


Sir Walter Scott, the most popular writer of his: 


age, was affected toward the close of life with soften- 
ing of the brain. Gradually his noble powers were 
palsied; the light of that brilliant imagination, that 
exalted reason, went out; but his uprightness and 
purity of life, his kindness of manners and benevo- 
lence of heart, remained, and relatives and friends 
gathered around him and ministered to him. They 
loved him none the less, yea, all the more, for his 
misfortune—a misfortune brought upon him by ex- 
cessive toil induced by his stern integrity and de- 
termination honorably to discharge his debts.. With 
increased fervency they offered their prayers for his 
great but dimmed soul, and with more tender sensi- 
bility they ministered and wept at his pillow. But 
O, if he had corrupted his conscience, had put out 
the light of God within him, had emancipated him- 
self from debt by fraud, or had come before his 
friends with the blood of the innocent upon his 


/ 


MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. — 105 


hands, although his mind might have blazed out 
and flamed up with celestial brilliancy, we should 
have turned with horror from the light as we would 
turn from the furnace of Satan’s great soul! 

There is, then, in man a conscience, which out- 
lives the sensations, resolutions, and emotions of the 
hour, and rising above them all; “which from the 
temporary agitation of passion rises unaltered and 
everlasting, like the pyramid that lifts the same 
point to heaven amid the sands and whirlwinds of 
the desert.” He who has so made human nature 
must himself be righteous. 


VG 
LIFE A PROBATION. 


MEN are in a state of trial. 

1. They are so in regard to their temporal in- 
terests. Nearly all our enjoyments and sufferings 
depend upon ourselves. If we were to speculate as to 
how things ought to be, we might suppose that men 
should come into the world perfect, with a full knowl- 
edge of what their happiness consists in, and what 
would lead to it, and with no temptation to do any 
thing inconsistent therewith. But itis otherwise. Ig- 
norance, negligence, passion, bad education, bad exam- 
ple, and external temptations tend to lead every man 
astray. Bad habits are easily formed, and with diffi- 
culty broken up. Although it is easy to discern that 
a certain course of life will, upon the whole, secure 
our temporal interest, and that an opposite one will 
bring upon us worldly ruin, yet few pursue the former. 
To many life is a failure. Here is one who seems to 
have no thought for the future, and who uses his rea- 
son so little that it would seem he would make a 
good bargain if he could exchange it for instinct. 
Here is another so deceived by appearances that, 
while every body else may see that he is building 
on. the sand, he thinks he is on a rock. A third is 


borne down by intemperance ; struggling, it may be, 
fe) 107 


or 


108 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


against the destroyer; a fourth, by sinful pleasure, 
though well knowing that her guests are in the 
depths of hell! 

2. In like manner, we are in a state of trial in re- 
gard to our spiritual and eternal interests. Life is a 
theater which affords scope for both good and evil 
actions ; it presents motives to the one, and temp- 
tations to the other. 


Il. What is the nature of the trial? 


1. It is severe. An examination of our own 
hearts, and the testimony of others, will show this. — 
Dr. Franklin, who, after wandering in the mazes of 
infidelity, finally settled upon the cardinal principles 
of natural religion, undertook his own reformation. 
“JT wished,’ he says, “to live without committing 
any fault, and to conquer all that either inclination, 
custom, or company might lead me into. As I 
knew, or thought I knew, what was right and wrong, 
I did not see why I might not always do the one and 
avoid the other. But I soon found I had undertaken 
a task of more difficulty than I had imagined. While 
my attention was taken up, and care employed, in 
euarding against one fault, I was often surprised by 
another; habit took the advantage of inattention ; in- 
clination was sometimes too strong for reason.” He 
therefore resolved to attend to the virtues one at a 
time. He entered a list of them in a book, to each 
of which he allotted a page, so ruled, with red and 
black ink, that he could easily record his delinquen- 
cies. Thus provided, he gave one week's particular 
attention to each virtue; and, as his virtues were 


LIFE A PROBATION. 109 


thirteen in number, he was able to go through his 
book four times in the year. 

What was his success? “I was surprised to find 
myself,” says he, “so much fuller of faults than I had 
imagined; but I had the satisfaction of seeing them 
diminish. To avoid the trouble of renewing, now and 
then, my little book—which, by scraping out the marks 
on the paper of old faults, to make room for new ones 
in a new course, became full of holes—I transferred 
my tables and precepts to the ivory leaves of a mem- 
orandum book, on which lines were drawn with red 
ink, that made a durable stain, and on these lines I 
marked my faults with a black-lead pencil, which 
marks I could easily wipe out with a wet sponge. 
After a while I went through one course only in a 
year, and, afterward, only one in several years ; till, at 
length, I omitted them entirely, being employed in 
voyages and business abroad, with a multiplicity of 
affairs that interfered.” | 

Here was a wise, determined man, undertaking his 
own reformation, finding himself, to his own surprise, 
full of faults—scratching his book full of holes, resort- 
ing to an ivory surface from which he could erase the 
entries with a sponge—finally giving it up. In the 
history of even the most religious soul, there are 
marvelous grace and painful failures. In the history 
of the Christian Church, this deliverance from pagan- 
ism, this rescue from infidelity, this passage through 
the dark ages, this unconsumed truth, are they not as 
wonderful as the divided sea, the cloud by day, the 
fire by night, the waters gushing from the cleft rock, 
and the manna falling from the open heaven? And 


I1O EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


this imperfect service, this heart-wandering, this slow 
progress, these defiled pages of Zion’s history, do they 
not make a case as marvelous as that of those who 
lusted so, that, while the meat was yet in their 
mouths, the wrath of God fell upon them ; who wor-_ 
shiped idols even beneath the mount that shook and 
thundered and burned with the presence of Jehovah? 

>. This trial is the same, in kind, to all men. 
Every man is inclined to think that there is some- 
thing peculiar in his own trial. Yet it can not be 
Every trial must come either from what is within us, 
or from what is without us; that is, from our appe- 
tites, passions, and affections, or from our external 
circumstances. But, essentially, every man’s zature 
is the same, and every man’s surroundings. Every 
man has the same desires, passions, and emotions ;_ 
love of pleasure, ease, power, fame, etc. Every one 
sustains similar relations to his fellow-men—those of 
child, brother, husband, father, friend, enemy—from 
every one of which severe trials may arise. Every 
one is under similar obligations to personal, domestic, 
social, and religious duty, from which he may be 
diverted. Our external circumstances are similar. 
The world opens the same scenes to our senses ; 
human life the same arena to our feet. True, our 
houses, equipages, occupations, titles, are different ; 
but it will be found, on examination, that no one is 
so high as to be above fear, none so low as to be 
without hope; and that to every one is allotted his 
share of success and disappointment, injury and grati- 
tude, honor and shame. 

3. The degree, or intensity, of the trial is such as 


LIFE A PROBATION. IIl 


is common. The reason why one supposes his trials 
more severe than his neighbor’s, is because while he 
knows the one, he does not know the other. Gardiner, 
while he was pronounced the “happy rake,” envied the 
dog that crossed his path. The house, supposed to be 
one of unmingled joy, had a skeleton within. The 
hypochondriac, who was sent to the French comedian, 
that kept all Paris laughing, in order to learn the 
secret of perpetual joy, found the actor more melan- 
choly than himself. 

You recollect the classic fable, where Jupiter, find- 
ing that each man thought himself treated with un- 
usual severity, caused all men to be brought together 
for a mutual exchange of burdens. It was all well, 
until each man displayed his sorrow. One had a con- 
cealed ulcer; another, a sightless eye; another, a be- 
setting sin; another, an intolerable debt ; another, a 
fearful recollection ; another, an awful apprehension 
that had never before been suspected, and that hung 
like a depressing weight on all his enjoyments ; and 
when the burdens were all exposed to view, and each 
man was bidden to make his own selection, every man 
took up his own burden, to which he was accustomed, 
rather than that of any of his neighbors. 

We must bear in mind, however, that trials are to 
be measured by their relation to those tried. As the 
strength of men is unequal, so the trials, in order to 
be equitable, must be so likewise. The mercy which 
directs that animals of unequal power shall not be 
made to draw in the same yoke, will not permit 
souls of unequal strength to be bound to the same 
burden. 


I12 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


The forms of trial must also be varied. Here-is 


one whose external circumstances are unfavorable ; 


his temptations to lie, steal, and cheat, are very 


strong. Here is another, who has inherited a pro- 
pensity to intemperance, and whose companions and 
habits have strengthened this natural propensity. 
Here is a third, whose fortune places him above all 
temptation to fraud, and whose intellectual tastes, 
choice companions, and refined education, render all 
forms of beastly indulgence disgusting. Some other 
than the common modes of trial must be devised for 
the last; and usually it will be found that the trial, 
in ‘such a case, is internal, consisting of temptations 
to unbelief, envy, pride, that sin of the devil, etc. 
There are certain grades of civilization in which 


the trials are of this sort—states in which property 1S) 


easily acquired, intelligence widely diffused, and the 
speculative intellect generally cultivated. Success in 
discovery develops pride of intellect, and the tracing 
of effects to causes often tempts us to ignore him 
who originates, guides, and ends the chain whose 
links we consume ourselves in tracing, so that we cry, 
“Who is the Almighty that we should serve him?” 

4. The trials of men are not beyond their strength. 
This we might infer from the nature of God, who is 
both just and impartial. With every temptation there 
comes power, if we seek it, by which we shall either 
bear up under it, or find a way out of it. Mark: it is 
not said that God tempts us. Indeed, the contrary 
is said. “God is not tempted of evil, neither tempteth 
he any man.” Moreover, we are taught, that he will 
not suffer any one to be tempted beyond his capacity, 


\ 


LIFE A PROBATION. 113 


and, that he knoweth how to deliver the godly out of 
temptation. 

Here is one on the way to the scaffold. Though 
he may be of low family, and may have grown up un- 
der the most unfavorable circumstances, does he not 
know that he has done wrong, and feel that he might 
have done otherwise? Supposing him to have been 
reared in a Christian land. Did he not know that 
there is a God? that Christ is a Savior? that man is 
a sinner? that repentance and faith are the conditions 
of salvation? that holiness is the way to heaven? 
Were you to search in the darkest purlieu of the most 
corrupt city, or the remotest corner of the most un- 
civilized township, could you find one so ignorant as , 
not to know these things? Even if you should find 
one, ask these questions concerning him: Might he not 
have known them? could he not have obtained a Bible; 
attended a Sabbath-school; heard a minister; found a 
circle of religious companions ; secured a membership 
in the Church of God; a conviction ; conversion; sanc- 
tification ; a path of ascending light, and a strength of 
grace, making him mightier day by day? and you will 
evince his guilt. For men are responsible not merely 
for what they do know, but for what they may know. 
It is the duty of every subject to know the law; and, 
where knowledge is a duty, ignorance is a crime. We 
are responsible for all the knowledge that comes 
within the scope of our capacity and means of in- 
formation. 

But suppose the criminal is a heathen. Neverthe- 
less, does he not know that it is wrong to lie, cheat, 
murder? Suppose he had been under great tempta- 


Il4 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


tions, might he not have resisted them? Is he not 
rational and accountable? Has he not been so ad- 
judged, both by his fellow-men, and by his own con- 
science? Is he not susceptible of remorse? and what 
is remorse but self-condemnation? How much so- 
ever men may excuse their guilt in days of health, do 
they not confess when they come to die? Who, ¢hen, 
pretends that he has been borne on by a resistless 
tide? The very cry for mercy is enough to show his 
conviction of the contrary. 

Noble gifts, education in a virtuous family, a wide 
sphere of action, great motives and opportunities, do 
not always make great and good men. On the other 
hand, men of moderate abilities often rise from vicious 
families, through straitened ‘circumstances, against 
powerful temptations, to a life marked by noble prin- 
ciples, sacrifices to the public good, and monuments 
of national utility. As in things temporal, so in 
things spiritual. The loftiest heights of virtue have 
been scaled from the lowest depths of vice, and the 
lowest depths of vice have been reached from the 
loftiest heights of virtue. There is no pressure which 
we can not bear, no snare from which there is not a 
way out. 


Ill. Why are we placed in this state of trial? 


1. It is to develop character. A merchant tries 
his clerks, and dismisses or employs them according 
as they behave; a college tries its pupils, and ad- 
vances or degrades them according to their acquisi- 
tions; a general tries his soldiers, and cashiers or 
promotes them, according as they behave in battle; 


LIFE A PROBATION. II5 


a king tries servants, and advances them to honor and 
power, or discharges them, according as they bear 
themselves under the ordeal. 

It may be said that, as God is omniscient, he 
needs not to try his subjects in order to know their 
temper and capacities. But he may use trial to mani- 
fest them to others, that his rectitude, in the disposi- 
tion he makes of his creatures, may be known to the 
universe. 

2. To educate us for a higher life by habituating 
us to obedience. It may be said, God might have 
made us as he wants us at first; but we know that he 
has not done so. This is not his plan. He does not 
create even a peach without a process. He does not 
create a man, physically, without a long period and 
numerous agencies. Why should he perfect him 
morally by miracle rather than by nature? We come 
into being imperfect, and should soon perish did we 
not proceed to educate ourselves. 

What would be the condition of a man, created 
mature, without the training of infancy and youth? 
Buffon describes it in a recital which he puts into the 
mouth of our first parent of which I give an extract: 

“T knew not what I was, where I was, or whence 
I came. On opening my eyelids, what an addition 
to my surprise! The light of day, the azure vault 
of heaven, the verdure of the earth, the crystal of 
the waters—all employed, all animated—filled me . 
with inexpressible delight. At first I imagined that 
all those objects were within me and formed a part 
of myself. Impressed with this idea, I turned my 


eyes toward the sun whose splendor instantly dazzled 
11 


116 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. ‘ 


and overpowered me. Involuntarily I closed my eye- 
lids, though not without a slight sensation of pain, 
and during this short interval of darkness I imagined 
that I was about to sink into nothing. Full of afflic 
tion and astonishment, I had begun to ponder on this 
change, when, listening, I heard a variety of sounds. 
The whistling of the wind and the melody of the 


grove formed a concert, of which the soft impression © 


pervaded the inmost recesses of my soul. I continued 
to listen, nor could I banish the persuasion that all 
this music was actually within me. So much was I 


engrossed with this new kind of existence, that I eney 


tirely forgot the light—that other part of my being 
which I had known the first—till, again, I opened my 
eyes. What a joy to find myself once more in the 
possession of so many brilliant objects! The present 
pleasure surpassed the former, and, for a time, sus- 
pended the charming effect of sounds. I turned my 
eyes upon a thousand different objects. These, which 
I still considered a part of myself, I soon found that 
I could lose and restore at pleasure, and with a 
repetition of this new power I continued to amuse 
myself. 

“T had begun to see without emotion and to hear 
without confusion, when a light breeze, of which the 
freshness communicated a new sensation of pleasure, 
wafted its perfumes to me, and excited in me a kind 
of additional self-love. Agitated by all these different 
sensations, and impelled by the various pleasures of 
my new existence, I instantly arose, and, in arising, 
perceived myself moved along as if by some unknown, 
some hidden power. 


LIFE A PROBATION. RL? 


“Hardly had I advanced one step, when the nov- 
elty of my situation rendered me, as it were, immov- 
sble. My surprise returned, for I supposed that all 
the objects around me were in motion; to them I as- 
cribed that agitation which I had myself produced by 
changing place, and the whole creation seemed once 
more to be in disorder. I carried my hand to my 
head ; I touched my forehead; I felt my whole frame. 
Then it was that I first conceived my hand to be the 
principal organ of my existence. All its informations 
were so distinct, so perfect, and so superior to what I 
had experienced from the other senses, that I em- 
ployed myself for some time in repeating its enjoy- 
ments. Every part of my body which I touched with 
my hand, seemed to touch my hand in turn, and act- 
ually gave back sensation for sensation. 

“It was not long before I perceived that this 

faculty was expanded over my whole frame, and I be- 
gan to discover the limits of my existence, which, at 
first, I had supposed of an immense extent, and dif- 
fused over all the objects I saw. 

“Upon casting my eyes upon my body, and sur- 
veying my own form, I conceived it to be of a size so 
enormous, that all the objects which hitherto struck 
my eyes semed to be in comparison, as so many lu- 
minous particles. I gazed upon my person with pleas- 
ure, I examined the formation of my hand, and all its 
motions ; and the former appeared to me more or less 
large in proportion, as it was more or less distant 
from my eyes. On bringing it very near, it concealed, 
I found, almost every other object from my sight. 

“TJ began soon, however, to suspect that there was 


s 


118 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


~ some fallacy in the sensation I experienced from the 
eye, and I therefore resolved to depend for informa- 
tion upon the touch, which, as yet, had never de- 
ceived me. This precaution was highly serviceable. 
I renewed my motions, and walked forward with my 
face turned toward the heavens. Happening to strike 
lightly against a palm-tree, I was dismayed, and laid 
my hand, though not without fear, upon this extrane- 
ous body ; for extraneous I conceived it to be, as it 
did not return sensation for sensation as my former 
feelings had done. Now it was that, for the first 
time, I perceived that there was something external, 
something which did not form an actual part of my 
own existence. 

“From this new discovery, I concluded that I 
ought to form my opinion with respect to external 
objects in the same manner that I had done with 
respect to the parts of my body. I resolved, there- 
fore, to feel whatever I saw; and, vainly endeavor- 
ing to touch the sun, I stretched forth my hands, and 
found nothing but an airy vacuum. At every effort I 
made, as an object appeared to me equally near, from 
one fit of surprise I fell into another; nor was it till 
after an infinite number of trials that I was enabled 
to use the eye as a guide to the hand, and that I per- 
ceived there were some objects more remote from me 
than others. 

“ Amazed and mortified at the uncertainty of my 
state, and at the endless delusions to which I seemed 
‘to be subjected, the more I reflected, the more I was 
perplexed. Fatigued and oppressed with thought, I 
seated myself beneath a tree loaded with delicious 


LIFE A PROBATION. Ily 


fruit, within my reach. On stretching forth my arm, 
the fruit instantly separated from the branches, and 
I seized it. To grasp in my hand an entire sub- 
stance, which formed no part of myself, pleased me. 
When I held it up, its weight, though in itself trivial, 
seemed, however, like an animated impulse to incline 
it to the earth. In conquering this resistance, I found 
another and greater pleasure. I held the fruit near 
my eye, and considered its form and colors. Its fra- 
grance prompted me to carry it nearer and nearer, 
and with eagerness did I inhale that fragrance. The 
perfume invited my sense of tasting, which I found 
superior to that of smelling. What savor, what nov- 
elty of sensation! Nothing could be more exquisite. 
What before had been pleasure was now heightened 
into luxury. The power of tasting gave me the idea 
of possession. I imagined that the substance of this 
fruit had become a part of my own substance, and 
that I was empowered to transform things without 
me at my will. 
| “Charmed with the idea of this new power, and 
incited by the sensations I had experienced, I con- 
tinued to pluck the fruit ; nor did I consider any la- 
bor too great for the satisfaction of my taste. At 
length, however, an agreeable languor stealing upon 
my senses, my limbs became heavy, and my soul 
seemed to lose its activity. My sensations, no longer 
vivid and distinct, presented to me only feeble and 
irregular images. In the instant, as it were, my eyes 
became useless, closed ; and my head, no longer borne 
up by the strength of the muscles, sunk back, and 
found a support upon the verdant turf beneath.” 


120 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Place such a being on a farm, in a workshop, a 
store, the exchange, in the parlor—how useless, what 
a nuisance! How we should watch and guard him 
as a lunatic! Every sense, every voluntary muscle, 
every mental power, would be useless or misleading ; 
and we should remain in idiocy, never capable of 
walking, reading, or even speaking, did we not cor- 
rect and train our senses and powers by experience. 
We learn more during the first two years of life than 
during any other five. 

It is not merely knowledge that we need, but 
adaptation; and this we obtain through the power of 
habit, which is capable of effecting settled alterations, 
not only of action, but of character. Its influence 
has been sketched by Shakspeare in a few forcible 


lines : 
“ Refrain to-night, 
And that will lend a kind of easiness 
To the next abstinence ; the next more easy ; 
For use can almost change the stamp of nature, 
And master even the devil, or throw him out, 
With wondrous potency.” 


Every act tends to form a habit of body, mind, 
or heart. Between passion and principle, under the 
temptations of life, there is a steady conflict. Yield 
to principle, and you at once strengthen it, weaken 
passion, and acquire both inclination to virtue and 
facility in it. Then comes the peace of conscience, 
the approbation of God, alliance with the good, to 
confirm this virtuous tendency. Let this process be 
continued without interruption, and every act is con- 
tributing to form a character fitted for the skies, as 
surely as every brick laid in a wall under the direc- 


LIFE A PROBATION. I21 


tion of a wise architect, is contributing to rear a 
building. Yield in the opposite direction, and the 
process will be reversed; you will strengthen pas- 
sion, weaken principle, fall into alliance with all the 
evil of the universe, and every act in the same direc- 
tion will tend to fit you for perdition as certainly as 
every shovelful of earth thrown from the bottom 
of an excavation will sink it deeper. The longer we 
continue in a course either of virtuous or vicious 
action, the more serious the difficulty of making a 
change, and the greater the improbability that we 
shall ever attempt it. We may complain of this, 
but we can not alter it. 

It is not necessary here to show the provisions of 
mercy and grace which revelation discloses. The 
merciful provision by which we are able to rise from 
infancy to manhood, is the same by which we may 
rise from manhood to angelhood. And is there no 
pleasure in the process? no pleasant recollections 
of childhood and youth? no joy in ascending the 
heights of knowledge and virtue? in solving painful 
problems, in hardening mental sinews, in conquering 
foes, amassing fortunes, even through hairbreadth 
escapes and valleys of death? Ay, is there not 
more pleasure in winning than in wearing—in build- 
ing than in resting? But what are the foes and 
triumphs of the field to those of the soul; the 
taking of a city to the subjugation of the spirit; the 
building of a palace to the building of a Godlike 
character; the acquisition of heaven to the training 
of a soul for the companionship of angels? 

3. To give to us the spirit of submission. As 


I22 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


we can not comprehend the plans of God, or see 
into futurity, it is necessary that we should form 
the habit of resting quietly and cheerfully under the 
Divine providence. Our self-love and self-will are 
every now and then found rising in rebellion against 
the order of things. Very few are aware how great is 
their opposition to the will of God until they come 
to examine their castle-building, or to suffer some 
severe disappointment. Afflictions and misfortunes 
are a Salutary discipline of patience and resignation. 
No man can be happy until he can pray with 
the heart, “Father, thy will be done.” This spirit 
will be needed through all the realms of heaven and 
all the ages to come, as sure as our nature will 
remain what it essentially is. 

4. We need trial for our purification. The doc- 
trine of depravity is as much a doctrine of philoso- 
phy as of Scripture. Our thoughts are like water, 
which, from whatever source it comes, has impuri- 
ties. If it descend through the atmosphere, it ab- 
sorbs the gases which are floating therein; if it flow 
through the earth, it is impregnated with the soluble 
mineral substances of the ‘strata over which it passes. 
If you would have it pure, you must distil it. So 
thoughts’ from heaven are impregnated in_ their 
passage downward with the vapors of the earth; 
thoughts from earth are always tinctured with its 
impurities. We need the furnace to clarify them. 
If the thoughts, how much more the desires, imag- 
ination, passions, propensities ! 

5. To give us a sense of our imperfection and 
dependence. By testing us, God shows us that while 


~~ 


\ 


* - » = ‘he 2 a “4 * 2 ~ 
ee ee ee ee ee eS 


LIFE A PROBATION. 123 


“we think we are increased in goods and in need of 
nothing, we are wretched and poor and miserable 
and blind and naked, and leads us to seek the gold 
tried in the fire, and white raiment and divine eye- 
salve. We realize that we are foolish, sinful, de- 
praved, dying, and are made ready to clasp Him who 
is made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, sanc- 
tification, and redemption. 

You pity that Christian that has lost his child; 
he may tell you God took the child to save the 
parent. You pity that merchant who has lost his 
goods; he may say, God hath torn the veil from 
mine eyes, and opened to me the vision of the 
crown. You pity that man who has lost his leg; 
he may lift his crutch and say, “ Before I was 
afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept thy 

-law.” God is our Father, even when he cuts off his 
children’s legs rather than they should run away 
from him. 


IV. Why should the trial be so severe? Here is 
a weeping Rachel crying: 


“Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost. 
I am not mad—I would to Heaven I were; 
For then,’tis like I should forget myself! 
Preach some philosophy to make me mad, 
And thou shalt be canonized, Cardinal. 
For being not mad, but sensible of grief, 
My reasonable part produces reason, 
How I may be delivered of these woes, 
And teaches me to kill or hang myself. 
If I were mad, I should forget my son, 
Or madly think a babe of clouts were he. 
I am not mad—too well I feel 
The different plague of each calamity.” 


“ 


124 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Ah, woman, thy very words show the necessity 
for this—the severest trial that could be appointed 
thee! They show the idolatry of thy heart. How 
could it go up to God with such a weight upon it? 
This is the very trial that is necessary to turn thee 
from sin to righteousness, from earth to heaven. 
Thou needest not philosophy to make thee mad, 
but religion to make thee reasonable. Then shalt 
thou sit quietly at the Savior’s feet, and find all that 
thou hast lost. 

Here is a confiding, generous soul that is be- 
trayed—a proud and honorable one, on whose house- 
hold comes a stain. He could have borne the loss 
of goods and offices and honors—could have stood 
up under mildew and_ blasting, and hail and _ fire, 
and sung, “Although the fig-tree shall not blossom, 
neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labor of the 
olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; 
the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there 
shall be no herd in the stalls; yet I will rejoice in 
the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.” 
He could have laid his hand daily on his cooling or 
burning head, and realized that his mind was going 
out or running wild, and still cried, “Thy will be 
done.” Hecould have received into his heart the dag- 
ger of the assassin, and prayed, “ Father, forgive!” He 
could have laid all his loved ones in honorable graves, 
and rained over them the tears of a soul sobbing, 
“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.” 
But to have “home, sweet home,” turned into bitter- 
ness; the castle into which he was wont to retreat 
from the world, betrayed into the hand of the enemy ; 


LIFE A PROBATION. 125 


the purest fountains of earthly joy poisoned; the 


graves of the dead and the memories of the living 


loved ones dishonored ; the very temple of God filled 
with maddening associations, and the serpent of sus- 
picion by its horrid folds separating him from every 
human embrace,—this makes him cry out, “ My God, 
my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ He has not 
forsaken you; he has searched you, and found out 
where the dross is, and kindled the fire beneath it. 
He is making good metal, and therefore using intense 
heat. 

All other trials you might have borne, without ac- 
quiring such a sense of the heinousness of sin as would 
go into the structure of the soul, and last in eternity. 
All other wrongs you might have endured, without 
having lighted in your bosom a lamp to make all its 
chambers of imagery visible, and call from all its 
depths the cry, “Wash me thoroughly from mine 
iniquity.” All other woes you might have felt, with- 
out learning to compassionate the lost, and yearn 
after sinners more deserving of mercy than the near 
and dear ones, whom, nevertheless, you would save, 
even by self-sacrifice. All other darkness might 
have been poured over the world, without making 
you cry out, “ Whom have I in heaven but thee? and 
there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” 
All other observation of the world’s wickedness 
might have been insufficient to form in you that 
circumspection, resolution, and self-denial which will 
crystallize your virtue and make it durable and trans- 
parent as the diamond. Chemically, there is no 
difference between the charcoal and the diamond, 


126 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


between the chalk and the marble. What makes the 
one so much more valuable than the other? It has 
been subjected to volcanic heat under great pressure. 

Nor must we forget that to those having special 
trial, special sympathy and grace are given. When 
I receive a letter from home informing me that my 
family are well, my heart beats toward all with an 
equal sympathy ; but when I learn that my babe is 
sick, or my wife, or my daughter, my sympathies con- 
centrate upon the sufferer, and my first prayer as- 
cends for him or her. Is it not so with God also? 
Are not his crippled and weeping children calling 
forth his warmest love and pity, the Almighty’s 
especial sympathy for our tried race? 

Religion clearly teaches: God enters humanity 
through Christ, goes with it through all the experi- 
ences of life and the agonies of death, and rises with 
it transfigured to the throne, providing a way as he 
passes, by which the guilty may be pardoned, elevated 
to a position higher than he originally possessed, and 
made the best beloved child in the vast family of God. 

Great trial seems to be a necessary preparation for 
great duties. Angels were tried. Adam, when called 
to be the head and representative of a new race, was. 
tried. Abraham, when called to be the father of 
the faithful, was subject to a severe ordeal. David, 
called to be king of Israel, and its sweetest singer, 
was subjected to the heat of a fierce furnace. 
Daniel, and, indeed, the whole line of prophets, 
passed through fire. Paul and the apostles were 
trained in the school of suffering and persecution. 
And so it was with Wickliffe, Jerome, Huss, Luther, 


LIFE A PROBATION. ~ 127 


Wesley. It would seem that the more important 
the enterprise the more severe the trial to which the 
agent is subjected in his preparation. 

May not this account for the severity of our pro- 
bation? May not the race be destined to such duties 
in the future world as to require the severest trial 
as a preparatory experience? Bellamy, after asserting 
that God knows and has done exactly what was wisest 
and best, and most for his own glory, adds: “ How 
know we if God thinks it best to have a larger 
number of intelligences, to behold his glory and be 
happy in him, but that he judges it best not to 
bring them into existence till the present grand 
drama shall be finished at the Day of Judgment, 
that they may, without sharing the hazard of the 
present confused state of things, reap the benefit of 
the whole through eternal ages; while angels and 
saints may be appointed their instructors to lead 
them into a knowledge of all God’s ways to his crea- 
tures, and of all their ways to him, from the time of 
Satan’s revolt in heaven to the final consummation 
of all things? And as the Jewish dispensation was 
introductory and preparatory to the Christian, so this 
present universe may be introductory and prepara- 
tory to one after the Day of Judgment, almost in- 
finitely larger.” Indeed, I am not unwilling to admit 


the strong probability of the hypothesis of Edward 


Beecher, “that the work of creating and training 
intelligent beings to know and love God is but just 
begun, and that the main increase and extension of 
the universe is yet to come; and that by the re- 
demption of the Church the universe will be brought 


128 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


into such a state that that increase can be made 
without any hazard of any new entrance of moral 
evil, and be continued forever; and especially that 
the Church, owing to the manner of her redemption 
and her peculiar training, will be prepared to pre- 
side over and to train the successive generations of 
new created minds as no other can, and that for this 
end, and also as the resting-place of his own highest 
and most peculiar affections, she will be united to 
God and exalted.” 


V. Why should so many pass out of life without 
the probation so needful for us ? 


A large part of our race, say two-fifths, go into 
the eternal world in infancy. The reason of this we 
may not know. ,We have no doubt that, by God's 
grace, they are admitted into heaven. But we can 
not suppose they will have that elevation of rank, 
that intensity of joy, or that sublimity of service 
which are for those who have passed through much 
tribulation. 

“A babe in glory is a babe forever ; 
Perfect as spirits, able to pour forth 
Their glad hearts in the tongues that angels use. 
Those nurslings gathered in God’s nursery, 
Forever grow in loveliness and love. 
Growth is the law of all intelligence, 
Yet can not pass the limit which defines 
Their being. ‘They have never fought the fight, 
Nor borne the heat and burden of the day, 
Nor staggered underneath the weary cross.” 

In the day when the redeemed shall have. an 
abundant entrance ministered unto them into the 


everlasting kingdom, as the procession passes, a spec- 


LIFE A PROBATION. 129 


tacle to angels, methinks they will see a great differ- 
ence in the aspect and honors of the different parts 
of the ascending hosts. Who is that stalwart Asiatic, 
with elastic step, large liquid eyes, expressive counte- 
nance, so beautiful in repose, and head so ample, full- 
arched, and well poised above its fellows? That is he 
who was cast into the lion’s den. Who that Jew, of 
majestic mien and benignant look—the appointed 
leader of that long and brilliant company? He who 
laid his head upon the block for his Master, saying, 
“T am ready to be offered up.” Who is this broad- 
shouldered Saxon, with look so confiding, candid, 
and loving? It is the glorious dreamer, who penned 
immortal lines in Bedford jail. All are stars; but 
one star differeth from another star in glory. All 
may soar on wings of light and triumph in immortal 
powers, and go forth as messengers of the throne, to 
bear intelligence and bring back praise; but not with 
equal rank. All shall be priests and kings; but 
there shall be rulers of single cities and rulers of 
ten cities. And in that day many a soul unknown 
to fame, and even written to dishonor, shall rise in a 
majesty of love and trust whose foundations were 
laid in the darkness, amid sufferings known only 
to God. 


VI. Why should the probation result as tt does? 


For, in a majority of cases, it seems to develop 
vice rather than virtue—to lead to damnation rather 
than salvation. Bishop Butler replies. It is a mys- 
tery no greater, though more afflicting, than that of 
the millions of animal and vegetable seeds so few 


130 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


should germinate, and that of these so few should 
come to perfection. I think, however, the subject 
may be relieved by the following considerations : 

1. That more than one-third of the race dies in 
infancy, and, we have every reason to believe, are 
saved. 3 

2. Multitudes in the heathen world are so follow- 
ing the light they have as to evince that, if a greater 
were given, they would improve it.. Such as Cornelius, 
whose prayers and alms went up acceptable to God. 
Cicero and Socrates were, perhaps, other examples of 
the olden time. 

3. Many children who are converted are not num- 
bered with the Church. 

4. Many repent and embrace Christ of whom the 
Church is not informed, especially among the poor, 
the suffering, and dying. . 

5. Many who are idiotic or deranged, and are not 
responsible, are saved as children. 

6. That Christian truth and public virtue increase 
from age to age. If it were otherwise, the course of 
things would tend to destruction; but it tends to 
progress. | | | 

7. The probabilities are that, in less than a cen- 
tury, all the earth will have the Gospel. 

Suppose, after the world is redeemed, it should 
continue a millenium ; and who knows but it may—a 
prophetic millenium? Then, at the consummation of 
all things, the lost to the saved may be only as the 
state-prison to the whole population of the state. Let 
us not distress ourselves over the problem. When our 
Lord was asked, “ Are there few that be saved?” he 


LIFE A PROBATION. 131i 


did not answer, but deduced from the circumstances 
that suggested the question a practical remark of in- 
estimable value and universal application: “Strive to 
enter in.” All life, the whole universe, is a mystery, 
to be explained consistently with God’s wisdom and 
goodness. What we know not now, we shall know 
hereafter. 

The prayer of Dr. Johnson is worthy to be 
adopted by us all: “O Lord, my Maker and Pro- 
tector, who hast graciously sent me into this world to 
work out my salvation, enable me to drive from me all 
such unquiet and perplexing thoughts as may mislead 
or hinder me in the practice of those duties which 
thou hast required. When I behold the works of thy 
hands, give me grace always to remember that thy 
thoughts are not my thoughts, nor thy ways my ways. 
And while it shall please thee to continue me in this 
world, where much is to be done and little known, 
teach me, by thy Holy Spirit, to. withdraw my mind 
from unprofitable inquiries, from difficulties vainly 
curious, and doubts impossible to be solved. Let me 
rejoice in the light which thou hast imparted; let me 
serve thee with active zeal, humbled confidence, and 
wait with patient expectation for the time in which 
the soul which thou receivest shall be satisfied with 
knowledge. Grant this, O Lord, for Jesus Christ’s 
sake.” 

Then, if not before, we shall sing: “Great and 
marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty ; just 
and true are thy ways, thou King of saints.” “Glory 


be to the Father,” etc. 
I2 


Sia 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 


OUNG men of this age are accustomed to specu- . 

late very freely concerning the attributes, pro- 
ceedings, and obligations of the Almighty. They. can 
tell what is honorable and right in 42m, and what is 
justifiable or excusable in ¢hemselves ; how far God can 
go without forfeiting their respect, and how far man 
can go without forfeiting God’s; and very often the 
issue of their studies is, that God can not punish the 
sinner at all. If z#ey had made the world, doubtless 
there would have been no punishment, and no occa- 
sion for any; for they would have had all men not only 
perfect in holiness, happiness, and knowledge, but free 
from temptation either to sin or folly. Of course, all 
would have been alike; for any deviation, either in 
character or fortune, from the perfect standard, would 
have been an imperfection. 

It is well, however, for us sometimes to suspend 
our idle; not to say blasphemous speculations, in order 
that we may inquire how God has made the world, 
and how he governs it. It is a pity that the Baconian 
philosophy, under which the modern sciences have 
made such steady and rapid advances, is so rarely ap- 
plied to religious themes. Men should ask what are 


the facts, and what principles are deducible from 
133 


134 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. > 


them, instead of evoking the principles by their own 
speculations, as a spider spins his web from his own 
bowels, and then trying to make the facts conform to 
them. If we have not the ability to determine, a 
priori, how the meanest insect should be constructed, 
how can we determine in what mode the universe 
should be built? If we can not show by what laws a 
leaf should be governed, how can we, independently, 
legislate for the immortal soul, much less for the In- 
finite Mind? 

If there are difficulties alike in his providence, 
works, and Word, it may be that they arise out of our 
incapacity, and not his zzjustzce, and it behooves us to 
wait for fuller information and larger powers to solve 
them: On the whole horizon of our knowledge a cloud 
of mystery rests. How to reconcile God's sovereignty 
with man’s freedom, or God’s justice with man’s prone- 
ness to evil, or God’s holiness with the inroduction of 
sin, I know not; yet I am sure of the terms. 

The doctrine of the Bible is, that the wicked, at the 
final judgment, go into everlasting punishment, the 
righteous into life eternal. Put the Bible into the 
hands of a Brahman, Mohammedan, Deist, or any 
other impartial judge, and ask him whether it plainly 
teaches this doctrine. What think you will be his 
answer? How has the Church, in all ages, with ex- 
ceptions scarce worth naming, interpreted the teach- 
ings of Scripture on this subject? Can a different 
interpretation be put upon them without rules of 
exegesis which would throw doubt and uncertainty 
over, the whole volume? Can it teach that there © 
is a limit to the sufferings of the lost, without also 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 135 


teaching that there will be a like limit to the joys of 
the redeemed? The same Greek adjective qualifies 
both. If, on an essential point of doctrine, the pray- 
ing Church has been misled for more than eighteen 
hundred years, can the Bible be deemed a revelation 
to mankind? Yet the doctrine meets with great op- 
position. Nor need we wonder at this. No consider- 
ate mind can contemplate the irrevocable loss of an 
immortal soul without being appalled. _The pulpit 
has caused prejudice against it, by describing the 
Scriptural threats of future punishment as literal. 

In my youth I was accustomed to visit the “ Infer- 
nal Regions” in the Museum at Cincinnati. They 
were constructed by the sculptor Powers, after Dante’s 
description. Behind a grating, he made some dark 
grottoes full of stalactites and stalagmites, with ghosts 
and pitch-forked figures. The artist himself, arrayed 
in a black robe, disfigured with death’s-head and 
cross-bones; his forehead horned, his foot clubbed 
and cloven, his nose a lobster’s claw, his hand armed 
with a wand, connected with an electrical machine, so 
that he could give one, going near the grating, a good 
shock,—used to go in at certain hours to personate his 
Satanic Majesty. There, surrounded by horrible au- 
tomatic figures, with coarse imitations of groans, 
hisses, and thunder and lightning, he reigned supreme, 
by means of wires, over his dark domains, punching, 
tossing, and decapitating at pleasure. Whether he ~ 
intended it or not, the result was to shake the specta- 
tor’s faith in the popular view of hell. 

-I once heard a man in the streets of New York 
proclaiming a hell of literal fire, intensified by brim- 


136 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


stone, into which sinners, with flesh as sensitive as 
ours, are plunged, to endure interminable and ever- 
~ increasing suffering ; and, watching the crowd, I dis- 
covered that the sermon had an effect opposite to 
that which the speaker intended. No wonder. Into 
a literal hell the righteous might be plunged, as 
good men were tortured by the Inquisition, but 
not into the true hell, which is the penal condition 
of a condemned sinner. A literal fire might be ez- 
dured by a holy man, for the spirit of a man will 
sustain his infirmities; but the true hell is intol- 
erable, since a wounded spirit who can bear? A 
literal fire might be quenched; the threatened fire is 
unguenchable. From a literal hell an escape might be 
effected ; but how can ye escape if the fire is the penal 
essence itself? In literal fire the body only could 
be burned ; but we are taught zo¢ to fear them which 
can kill the body only, but to fear him who can 
destroy, that is, 7227, both soul and body in hell. 
The mind revolts at the idea of burning living 
men in a furnace of fire; but it can not escape the 
idea of the furnace of remorse. The prejudice has 
been increased by the spzrzt in which God is repre- 
sented as inflicting the pains of perdition. When he 
is described as angry with the wicked, the words 
must be taken in an accommodated sense. Things 
unknown must be represented by things known. 
There is a feeling in God toward sinners analogous 
to that which men feel. It is not a spirit of revenge, 
nor inconsistent with either tranquillity or benevo- 
lence; it is a steady displacency at sin, with a 
fixed determination to punish the transgressor. It 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 137 


can not be supposed that God is zmpasstve in re- 
gard to offenders. To be indifferent to vice, is to 
oppose virtue; to look with complacency upon in- 
justice, is to be unrighteous. Does not God expect 
ws to feel when another suffers wrong, as we would 
if we ourselves were the injured party? Will he 
demand of us a feeling that he does not cherish him- 
self? On the subject of future punishment, are the 
facts of nature in harmony with the teachings of 
revelation ? 

1. That we are under government is evident. 
To be under government is to be subject to law. 
Law is a forecertified connection between voluntary 
conduct and its results. The laws to which we are 
subject correspond to our compound nature and re- 
lations. Thus there are physical laws—circumspec- 
tion, exercise, temperance—to which are annexed, as 
penalties, loss of limb or life, or premature decay. 
There are intellectual laws, such as mental discipline, 
the accumulation of knowledge, and the application 
of our powers to useful purposes, to which are an- 
nexed the penalties of mental weakness, ignorance, 
and a low social position. There are also moral 
laws—truth, justice, charity—the penalties of which 
are internal disquiet, the scorn of mankind, failure in 
our pursuits, and an incapability of enjoying this life, 
and an abiding fear of a worse one. We can per- 
ceive these consequences; we can originate or omit 
their causes. It matters not how these laws are 
communicated, so that they are discernible ; nor how 
they are executed, whether by a police or by the 
silent forces of nature. Civil law would be none the 


~ 


138 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION 


less law if it were communicated by telegraph and 
enforced by steam. Natural laws are as much laws 
of God as if they were written in lightning on the 
cloud, or uttered in thunder from the sky; as much 
laws as if God sent visible angels to inflict their 
penalties with tangible scourges. 

Something ordains these laws; that ordainer is 
our Governor. We are capable of perceiving that 
he is intelligent and moral, and that his relations 
to us as our Creator, Preserver, Benefactor, and 
Ruler, give him claims upon our love, trust, grati- 
tude, and obedience, and that the absence of these 
graces must give rise to punishment proportionate 
to the magnitude of the relations on which they 
are founded. Reason points to another world, and 
teaches that, as we are under government “ere, we 
may be ¢here. : 

2. That our character and conduct in ¢#zs world 
will influence our condition in Zaz, is a supposition 
enforced by many analogies. The sins of youth are 
often punished in old age, the virtues of youth re- 
warded in after life. In general, the character of our 
youth determines our character and fortune in the 
subsequent stages of mortal life. “The boy is father 
of the man.” May not the man, in the same sense 
and the same way, be the father of the angel or the 
devil? Is it not just what, without revelation, we 
might believe, that as a good boy ripens into a good 
man, a good man may mature into a good angel, or an 
evil man into a bad one? 

3. Hence, third, in all ages and nations, men have 
believed in future rewards and punishments, as the 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 139 


religions and the poetry of all nations abundantly 
attest. 

The one hundred and eighty millions of Moham- 
medans, the one hundred and fifty millions of Hin- 
doos, the three hundred millions of Buddhists, to-day, 
believe-in future punishment, as well as the three 
hundred millions of Christians, with exceptions not 
worth naming. 

Even the few who profess to beliéve that men, 
however wicked their lives, pass at once, at death, to 
glory, will hardly stand a severe test of that faith. 
A captain, conveying many of our ministers to a 
conference, on avowing his Universalism, was asked 
if he had a passenger who gave to his boat all the 
trouble in his power, whether, on arriving at Buffalo, 
if he should make a feast, he would invite the troubie- 
some passenger to attend it? He replied, “ No,’ and 
departed. After a time, returning, he said, “Gentle- 
men, I have been reflecting, and I must say that 
human nature is so infamously bad, that if I were to 
make a Bible, I should put some hell in it.” Dr. 
M’G. told me that a neighbor, who was a Univer- 
salist preacher, had a lovely daughter who was de- 
ceived and ruined. He was relating the villain’s 
arts with deep emotion, when the doctor said, “I - 
believe that if he do not bitterly repent, a just pun- 
ishment awaits that seducer beyond this world.” 
The response was, “If there zs not a hell, there 
ought to be, for such scoundrels.” Indeed, I under- 
stand that Universalists have generally abandoned 
their doctrine and become restorationists. 


4. God, as Creator and Preserver, has a right to 
13 


‘ 


I40 : - EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. és 


govern, and we, as creatures, are bound to obey. 
His attributes are a sufficient guaranty that his pur- 
poses are wise and his ways just. As his laws are 
for our good, it is benevolence which prescribes them, 
and presents the most powerful motives to induce 
us to observe them. In addition to the commands 
of a rightful sovereign, and a consideration of our 
own interests, the mercies of God, so numerous and 
rich, one might suppose, would lead us to constant 
obedience ; but if infinite Wisdom sees that nothing 
less than eternal sanctions can adequately guard Di- 
vine law, zzfinite Love may have annexed them. 

s. The announcement of the sanctions of the 
moral law on the part of the Sovereign of the uni- 
verse, is, we believe, but a statement of a law of na- 
ture. The law of a tree, a fish, a bird, a man, is that 
formula which expresses the conditions of its being, 
development, and health. When a parent enjoins 
upon his child wholesome food, and threatens disease 
as a consequence of disobedience, he does not lay 
down an artificial law, but describes a xatural one 
So, when God proclaims the moral law, he lays down 
the conditions of spiritual life, and when he annexes 
the penalty he informs us of the natural results of 
violating these conditions. If a son, without any in- 
struction, prohibition, or threat of his father, put him- 
self in a dark cellar, drink stagnant water, eat putres- 
cent food, and, instead of walking the green earth 
and joining the company of his fellows, chain himself 
to a bolt, he must soon suffer disease, derangement, 
death ; so if, without any prohibition from Heaven, he 
hide upon the dark mountains of unbelief, supply his 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. I4I 


soul with lies, and sin as with a cart-rope, he must 
suffer moral disease and death. The commands 0: 
God and the laws of nature coincide. He does not 
inflict tortures upon the lost, but he does banish 
them from his presence and the glory of his power ; 
even as a father, in order to secure the peace and 
protection of his household, bids the prodigal son, 
who has been long borne with, reproved, admonished, 
disciplined in vain, to leave the paternal roof, for 
which he has rendered himself both unworthy and 
unfit. The term translated punishment, in the text 
quoted from the Savior, means cutting off, that is, 
from life. “Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him 
alone.” No more terrific words can be spoken in 
heaven or earth or hell, than when God says to the 
sinner, “ Let him alone.” 

6. This banishment from God itself takes place, 
we may suppose, not by force of an armed police, 
but by the silent, invisible workings of natural and 
necessary law. The means appointed by God for 
our happiness, when perverted, produce our woe. 
The eye, when abused and blood-shot, shuns even the 
most charming landscape; the ear, pierced until it 
is inflamed, shrinks from the finest harmony; the 
tongue, diseased, loathes the most delicious sweets ; 
the limbs, rheumatic, can not be drawn to the most 
pleasurable and healthful exercise. It is so with the 
soul. The understanding, which was made to appre- 
hend and adore God, when long trained to turn 
away from his attributes and relations, and ignore 
his claims, hides from him as guilty Adam in the 
Garden; the affections, though formed to love God, 


7 


142 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


after having been long trained to hate him, are in- — 
capable of their normal action; the will, designed — 
to run in the groove of God’s law, after having long 
been confined to ruts, which run athwart it, can not 
run in its proper path. Hence, the lost soul must 
regard the company, the employments, the enjoy- 
ments of heaven as irksome, oppressive, torturing 
It would instinctively run from the Father so deeply ~ 
wronged, and his faithful children, so grossly ma- 
ligned and bitterly reviled. Machiavel said he did 
not wish to go to heaven among poor monks; he 
preferred hell, where he would have the company of 
popes and cardinals. . 

Nor can we expect God to reverse his laws in 
order to save the sinner from these consequences. 
To save the man who leaps from a precipice, should 
gravitation be suspended, and the universe ruined? 
or should a special intervention occur, and thus un- 
certainty as to the results of our actions be intro- - 
duced? To save the lost, should sin be made the 
law of life, righteousness the law. of death, and 
heaven and hell change places, or be mingled? 
Would this be justice to the righteous, or would it 
be advisable to unsettle all the moral laws, and 
throw uncertainty over all the moral issues of the 
universe? The law of God, therefore, is not the 
conflict of will with will, but of wisdom with folly, 
knowledge with ignorance, right with wrong—the 
announcement out of parental Jove, of the conditions 
of spiritual life, happiness, immortality. The pun- 
ishment of sin, therefore, may be contemplated, not 
as the overflowings of wrath, but the outworkings of 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 143 


natural law, coincident with the judgment of infinite 
righteousness. 

There must be a correspondence between charac- 
ter and condition. Dr. Olin, dying, said, “I love 
God so, that it is impossible for me to go else- 
where than to heaven.” And it is to be feared that 
thousands in leaving the world might say, “I hate 


- God so, that it is impossible for me to go elsewhere 


than to hell.” “Myself am hell,” Milton makes Sa- 
tan cry. 

Theodore Parker, who taught that God, having 
created from a perfect motive, for a perfect purpose, 
of perfect material, and by perfect means, and that 
the Creator, being the only cause, men are not re- 
sponsible, but pass through sin to glory—Judas 
Iscariot and St. Paul alike—thus describes the old 
glutton: “Now he is old, his desire has become 
habit; but the instruments of his appetite are dull, 
broken, worn out. He recollects the wine and the 
debauch once rejoiced in. Now they have lost their 
relish ; his costly meat turns to gall in him. He 
remembers nothing but his feasting and his riot and 
his debauch. He has had his skin full of animal 
gluttony—nothing more. He thinks of the time 
- when his flesh was strong about him. So the 
Hebrews, whom Moses led out of thralldom, remem- 
bered the leeks and the onions and the garlic, which 
they did eat in Egypt freely, and said, Carry us back 
to Egypt, that we may serve false gods and be full. 
He dreams of his old life: some night of sickness, 
when opium has drugged him to sleep, it comes 
once more. His old fellow-sinners have risen from 


144 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


the dead. They prepare the feast; they pour the 


wine; they sing the filthy ribald song; the lewd 
woman comes in his dream—alas! it is only a 
dream; he wakes with his gout and his chagrin.” 
Suppose the opium had killed him, and he had 
awoke in eternity instead of time, would he have 
been fit for heaven and its angels, or would he have 
cried, “ Carry me back to the bottle and the brothel?” 

The same writer describes Aaron Burr, as he ap- 
proached death: “He was possessed of almost every 
loathly sin that human nature could, hold and yet 
hold together. He was more than eighty years old. 
But the old age of Aaron Burr—would you even 
wish worse punishment for the worst man that ever 
lived? The nation hated him not without. cause, 
for he turned a traitor to America. Within him all 


was rotten. He was a faithless friend; a subtle and . 


merciless enemy; a deceitful father, who sought to 
sell the honor of his only daughter, and she a wife 
and mother, too! Some night in his last days, when 
pain, most ignominiously got, kept him from sleep, 
perhaps consciehce came, and beat the reveille in 
his heart, and his memory gave up its dead; the 
-buried victims of his debauch rose before him, of 
his treason, of his lust, his malice, his covetousness, 
his revenge!” Suppose that night his last, and he 
enters the eternal world. Is he, “the worst man 
young America ever gathered in her bosom,’ fit to 
take up a harp on high and sit down with angels and 
the saints made perfect ? 

You recollect that duel which gave name to Bloody 
Island. The combatants fired, and wounded each other 


7 ‘ 
4 nae 
ee eee . * 
tn en i A et eel 


— . : aie 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. ‘ 145 


fatally; they were propped up in their blood and pas- 
sion to continue the conflict until death came to close 
theireyes. From their bloody corpses, did their brutal 
souls go to embrace each other in the realms of bliss 
as loving angels? To me, it is simply inconceivable. 
Can the bear of the forest find his home in the sea, and 
become the companion of salmon? Can a mountain, 
spouting cataracts of fire and sending torrents of lava 
down its sides, bring forth the peach and.the olive? 

7. The particular objections to future punishment 
are such as these: 

(1.) It follows actions advantageous or pleasurable. 

(2.) It is out of proportion to the sins for which it 
is inflicted. 

(3.) It comes long after the sins have been com- 
mitted. 

(4.) It comes suddenly and violently. 

(5.) It is never presented to the mind as certain. 

(6.) It is inflicted for sins, many of which are the 
results of infirmity or inattention. 

(7.) It affords no opportunity of recovery. 

These objections may all be answered by the 
course of natural providence. Let us illustrate. 

No one is more common than the second; namely, 
that the punishments of the future world are dispro- 
portionate—some say impossible, because zzfixzte, 
though they are infinite only in the sezse in which the 
soul is; namely, in duration—yet how often do cases 
occur in this life, in which, according to our nottons, 
punis'iment is out of proportion. 

a. Here is one who, in an hour of unlawful indul- 
gence, contracts a disease that affects, first, the flesh, 


146 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


then the general health, then the very bones. He 
loses at once his self-respect and his occupation ; he 
consumes his resources upon physicians, and is finally | 
taken to the hospital. There I saw him after he had 
been six years under treatment, the bones of his head 
gradually sloughing out. He was a wreck, alike in 
body, mind, fortune, and reputation ; reminding one of 
that Scripture, “ And thou mourn at the last, when thy 
flesh and thy body are consumed.” An ouz’s illicit 
pleasure, a /zfe of disappointment, misfortune, shame, 
and unavailing regret! What makes the case stronger 
is, that the sin was prompted by natural passion, and 
committed, not deliberately, but precipitately, under 
the influence of sudden and strong temptation, by 
which the sinner was, as it were, invaded and over- 
taken ; and, instead of being accompanied with moni- 
tions of coming vengeance, was attended with stormy 
pleasure. 

6, Take another case. An aged clergyman tells a 
falsehood, which secures to him a barrel of flour worth 
six dollars. The act was done inconsiderately. For 
a time, he experiences no inconvenience, and is led to 
suppose that it will be covered up; but it is whispered 
from ear to ear, and at length published on the street- 
corners. It must be noticed. He brings suit for 
damages ; the case is investigated in the civil courts. 
After long and expensive litigation, it is decided 
against him. His character and fortune are both 
gone. From the civil courts, the case goes to the 
ecclesiastical. He is expelled both from the ministry 
and the Church. Without trade, occupation, means, or 
reputation, he is thrown, in his old age, upon a cold and 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 147 


scornful world, with a large and lovely, but depend- 
ent family, whose fair prospects are blasted by one 
fell sin, which the world may call little, but whose 
consequences are fearfully great, and are propagated 
through coming ages. 

c. Perhaps no objection seems more formidable 
than this, that it is inconsistent for God to punish 
with irrecoverable loss a being so zzfirm and unfavor- 
ably situated as man. 

But here is one brought into life in a vile and un- 
believing family. From the cradle, his companions 
are thieves and drunkards, his conversation has been 
interwoven with oaths, his education has been neg- 
lected. No religious principles have fortified him 
against temptation, no pious examples have led him 
to pray. He drinks, steals, murders. He is arrested, 
tried, condemned, executed. Here we see that neither 
defective organization, defective education, the incul- 
cation of wrong principles by parental authority, the 
power of temptation, bad example, nor unfavorable ex- 
ternal circumstances, can prevent even fatal punish- 
ment under the righteous providence of God. After 
all, he might have known and done better. We may 
stand beneath the gallows and talk of the mercy of God, 
the weakness of man, the doctrine of necessity, the ir- 
responsibility of creatures such as we are, but it does 
not prevent the criminal from swinging off. May not 
the providence which assigns the gallows to such a 
man, assign perdition to an impenitent sinner ? 

ad. It is, however, to the efernzty of future punish- 
ment that the chief objection lies. This element of 
it results, I suppose, from the fact that there is no 


148 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


process for changing moral character beyond the 
grave. Life is the seed-time, eternity the harvest. 
“Be not deceived, God is not mocked. Whatsoever 
a man soweth that shall he also reap.” This is in 
perfect analogy with all nature. The character of the 
crop is determined by the nature of the seed, and the 
crop, once fixed, is not changed at pleasure in the 
harvest-time. It is in analogy with providence also. 
When God excludes the impenitent sinner irrevocably 
from heaven, he does precisely what we do every day. 
What respectable man will admit to his confidence 
one of bad character? Who that has a family of vir- 
tuous daughters, will admit to his parlor the inmates 
of the penitentiary? Should a weak benevolence in- 
duce one to do so, the terrible consequences to his 
household and to society would convince him that 
his fancied benevolence is cruelty. Shall we be more 
careful of our dear ones than God of his angels? 
The necessities of the moral universe demand the 
social exclusion of criminals, and this exclusion must 
continue as long as the character continues ; that is 
to say, it would be everlasting in this world if crim- 
inal character were immutable and human society 
eternal. Nor is this prolonged wrath—wrath in one 
sense, though mercy in another—deemed dispropor- 
tionate, even though the criminal performed his deed 
of fraud or lust or blood or treachery in a minute. 
Indeed, the time occupied by the criminal act is 
nothing, the character behind the act every thing. 
Moreover, every act of man, however instantaneous, 
propagates itself forever—inward upon the soul, out- 
ward upon the universe. 


ar. 


7 


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| ev ~, 
ft ee a ee er oe od 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 149 


Nor does the time during which a criminal has 
endured punishment entitle him to claim mitigation 
of it. A man has wronged you. You meet him a 
year after—a thousand years, a million ; you will not 
extend your hand to him, though all that time he has 
suffered in consequence of his sin, unless you know 
that he has repented ; for, instead of being /ess a sin- 
ner for his million years of suffering, he is more so, 
since all that time he has been assuming and cher- 
ishing his sin. Should you meet him on the plains 
of heaven, you would shun him all the same, if you 
knew that his character was unchanged. Judas, 
though dead, is execrated wherever Christ 1s known. 
This execration has come down the ages, and will 
go on through ages to come, and would be eternal 
if the Christian world were; and if he could be raised 
and made immortal here, would eternally~ suffer it. 
~ Why should we complain that God should do in 
eternity just what men do, as far as they are able, in 
~ time? 

Is there any thing in the character of God to pre- 
vent this result? There is; that he is above man. 
If he is infinitely good, he must desire the salvation 
of man; if he is infinitely wise, he can devise means 
for this purpose; and if he is infinitely powerful, he 
can execute those means. Now change the terms. 
If God is infinitely holy, he desires to prevent sin ; 
if infinitely wise, he knows ow to prevent it; if in- 
finitely powerful, he is ad/e to prevent it; therefore, 
there is no sin. But there 1s sin; therefore the argu- 
ment is not valid. Again, if God is infinite love, he 
must desire that all his creatures should be happy ; 


I50_ EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


his infinite wisdom and power are able to achieve 
what his infinite love conceives; therefore there is no 
misery. But look at the facts. God does not violate 
the moral organization he has set up. He moves in 
accordance with the law. He is to be judged, not 
_ by our speculations, but by his providences. 

Is there any thing in the nature of the soul to 
prevent its continued depravity? There are certain 
general principles we must keep in view in this dis- 
cussion. 1. Moral character depends absolutely upon 
volition. 2. The human will is free. It can defy a 
universe to control it. God himself can not control it. 
It may be reached only indirectly, through mind and 
heart, by motives. 3. Although infinite power, wis- 
dom, and goodness are engaged in this life to per- 
suade sinners to be saved, yet we see men resist all, 
and go on in wickedness down to death. 

Now, if men resist infinite motives in time, may 
they not in eternity? Will not the principles of 
moral government which prevail on this side of the 
grave, prevail on the other? 


“Of God above or man below, 
What can we reason but from what we know ?” 


Is there any thing in infinite space or everlasting 
duration to alter these principles or their results? 
Granted that there is a possibility that, in eternity, 
motives may be so modified as to produce greater 
effect, or the heart be so molded as to be more sus- 
ceptible of good impressions, but are there analogies 
to favor e'ther supposition? The longer men sin, the 
more easily they can; for every act of transgression 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. : I51 


weakens conscience, stupefies intellect, hardens heart, 
adds force to bad habit, and takes force from good 
example. And, surely, there is nothing in such asso- 
ciations as wicked affinities will insure to the sinner in 
the future state to incline him to repentance. 

Is there any thing in death to change the moral 
character? All we know of death is that it dis- 
organizes the body; but sin is not in the body, but 
the soul. All changes analogous to death leave the 
soul unchanged; such are sleep, swoon, suspended 
animation. Let a man go to the very door of death 
and be brought back, he is the same in character as 
he was before the wheels of life were arrested. No 
dissolution or combination of the mere carbon and 
hydrogen of our bodies can alter the moral nature 
of the soul. 

It is said that in the necropolis of ancient Egypt 
there have been found two kinds of mummies—one 
from which the vital organs have been removed, the 
other complete. Dr. Grusselbach, an eminent Swed- 
ish chemist professor of the University of Upsal, has 
come to the conclusion that the Egyptian mummies 
are not all bodies embalmed for death, but .that some 
are the bodies of individuals whose life has been 
momentarily suspended, with the intention of restor- 
ing them, at some future time, the process of which 
has become lost. The professor has been experi- 
menting with a view to this lost art. For example, 
he benumbed a snake, as if it had been carved in 
marble, and it was so brittle that had it dropped it 
would have broken to pieces. After keeping it in 
this state for years, he restored it to life. For fifteen 


5 Oe EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


years, this animal under his hand has been undergoing 
a series of deaths and resurrections. He has peti- 
tioned the Government for a criminal condemned to 
death, to be subjected to a similar process. Suppose 
the professor’s theory to be correct, and the art of res- 
toration be recovered, and applied to one of those mum- 
mies in the age of Pharaoh, would not the restored 
man, judging from all the analogies we have, be just 
such as he was when his life was suspended? The 
changes in the wor/d would have wrought no changes 
in Azm, he would speak the language, maintain the 
principles, breathe the spirit, with which he died. 

8. Concerning the character of hell there are 
various opinions, which may perhaps be reduced to 
five; namely, that it is, 1. A lunatic asylum; 2. An 
idiotic institution ; 3. A scaffold; 4. A reform school; 
5. A prison, where men are excluded from home, 
necessarily restrained, and compelled to suffer the nat- 
ural results of their sins. 

The first two may be taken together. There are 
various analogies to support the supposition that sin 
disorders the soul. All sin is a perversion of power ; 
perverted power has a tendency to introduce disorder 
into the machinery on which it is excited. Criminals 
generally act so that men reviewing their conduct say 
they must be crazy. Anger was called by the an- 
cients a short madness; and the saying, “ Whom 
the gods would destroy, they first make mad,” has 
been for ages proverbial. We know that sin fre- 
quently terminates in insanity. The possessed in old 
times were called lunatic. This view, however, af- 
fords but little relief to the mind ; for of all calamities 


oe ee 


a ee ee 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. +155 


that can happen to man, mental alienation is the worst. 
Hopeless insanity, raging—what can be more appall- 
ing! Scarcely less dreadful is the contemplation of 
eternal driveling idiocy—a transformation by which 
the moral attributes are eliminated, the intellectual 
paralyzed, and the memory of the past extinguished, 
existence and consciousness only being left. Here 
would be perpetual punishment, and an eternal ex- 
ample of penal infliction without suffering. But all 
descriptions of the future world which revelation con- 
tains, seem to require something more than this; and 
providence, so far as I can discover, supports the 
Scriptural descriptions by almost all its analogies. 
Does not the sense of justice support both ? 

Is hell a place of reformation? Are there within 
its walls an offer of pardon and means of regenera- 
tion? In this life there are. Is not reason in har- 
mony with revelation, in declaring that in the life to 
come there are zo¢? Does the incorrigible soul carry 
in itself the elements of regeneration? Does it not 
contain the opposite—unbelief, estrangement from 
God, hatred to holiness? Is punishment a regener- 
ator? Goodness leads to repentance, but does wrath ? 
Banishment from God and all holy beings, the com- 
panionship of evil spirits and of the lost men in 
the universe, are a poor process of regeneration. 
Are there any probabilities that a second probation, 
in which mercy and grace should be offered, would 
work out any other termination than the first? Are 
any mercies or motives conceivably greater than 
those already resisted? 

In London I beheld a chapel made in the manner 


154. EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


of the Crystal Palace—an iron frame, with glass win- 
dows. It was put up for the benefit of the sinful 
crowd who went to no Church. But what was its 
condition? Riddled completely by stones. Spur- 
geon once appeared preaching in the streets of the — 
same purlieu; but they stoned him, instead of hear- 
ing him. Should Jesus Christ himself appear in 
that purlieu, and walk up and down preaching 
mercy, with blood streaming from his hands and 
tears from his eyes, would they not stone him also? | 
But their condition is not as bad as that of the lost. 
Would they desire a transfer to heaven, after an ex- 
perience of a hundred or a thousand years in hell? 
An old man named Barnacles was, on last New- 
Years’ day, turned out of Whitecross-street Prison, 
London, after having been there twenty-seven years 
for non-payment of Government costs. He returned 
again next day, and begged to be restored to his old 
quarters. The light of the sun was too bright, the 
air too dry and pure, the water too fresh, and all his 
bodily organs were out of proper relation to, the 
outside world, and his moral relations too; for he 
had been shut up during a generation that had made 
more rapid advance than any other, and had got out 
of both his sight and sympathy. 

Men say, How can God look’ down and ‘sée lost 
men in everlasting torment, or how can their suffer- 
ings be of any use to the universe? It is easy to 
ask such questions, and equally easy to ask others. 
Why did God permit sin to enter the world? why 
keep in existence the fallen angels? why perpetuate 
a race of sinners, instead of destroying it ?—for how 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 155 


can God listen to the curse which rolls round the 
globe and down the ages, as men seethed in iniquity, 
or how can their sins and sufferings benefit the 
_ universe? To my mind, nature and revelation unite 
in teaching that hell is a prison, where men, shut 
out of heaven, are under restraint, and suffer the 
natural results of impenitent, sinful character. Would 
it not do for God to forgive these sufferers, and admit 
them to heaven, out of infinite and sovereign mercy ? 
Does not justice forbid the one, wisdom the other, 
and nature both? Would they not carry their con- 
demnation and damnation to the river of life ? 

Some hope to escape through the love and sacrifice 
of Jesus. We must recollect, however, that Jesus was 
holy. A man of obscure perceptions, feeble mind, and 
uncultured conscience, will have but little indignation 
against wrong; but it is otherwise with an enlightened 
and holy man. If, in proportion as our minds are 
enlarged, our hearts purified, and our consciences cul- 
tivated, our abhorrence of wrong and aversion to it in- 
creases, what must be the moral indignation of the in- 
finite and holy God against wrong-doers ? Men some- 
times hold up the mild God of Christianity in contrast 
to the stern Deity of the Hebrews ; but little do they 
know about either. The Lamb is, indeed, the em- 
blem of love; but what so terrible as the wrath of 
the Lamb? The depth of the mercy despised is the 
measure of the punishment of him that despiseth. 
No more fearful words than those of the Savior! 
The threatenings of the law were ¢emporal, those of 
. the Gospel are eternal. It is Christ who reveals the 
never-dying worm, the unquenchable fire, and he who 

14 


- 


156 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


contrasts with the eernal joys of the redeemed, the 
everlasting woes of the lost. His loving arms would 
enfold the whole guilty race, but not while impenitent 
and unbelieving ; the benefits of his redemption are 
conditional. 

Indeed, upon the theory we are combating, it is 
difficult to find any purpose for the scheme of re- 
demption. What does it do? Does it save us from 
sinning? No, we certainly do sin. Does it save us 
from suffering for sin? Certainly not; for it is con- 


tended that we suffer in this life exactly in proportion 


to our sin. Does it save us from eternal torments? 
Surely not, if we never were exposed to them. 

If this doctrine be true, it should be preached. 
Error can do no good, truth can do no harm. If 
God has threatened eternal death, he must see that 
this penalty is necessary to restrain finite mind and 
induce it to lay hold on proffered mercy; and if so, it 
is cruelty to cover up the threatening, Ministers are 
watchmen upon the walls, to warn the city of the 
approaching sword. Shall they close their eyes upon 
the on-coming columns of the foe, and let the doomed 
city sleep? If the flames are curling around the pil- 
low of your neighbor, is it azger or mercy to cry fire? 
“He that is a hireling seeth the wolf coming, and 
leaveth the sheep and fleeth, and the wolf cometh and 
catcheth the sheep. The good shepherd giveth his 
life for the sheep.” 

When a physician is in doubt whether his patient’s 
case is one of increased or decreased action, he resolves 
the doubt by the effect of remedies. Where the pun- 
ishments of the future world are generally disbelieved, 


4 s 
+ 
—ye 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 157 


what is the consequence upon moral character and 
public peace? An atheist says: “Men made laws to 
govern the world, but they saw that much evil was 
committed that could never be brought to light. To 
correct this, they feigned an All-seeing God, who 
should be a witness to what might occur in darkness, 
and in the secret chambers of the breast, and a Judge 
who could bring men to account beyond the grave.” 
How strong this testimony from the mouth of an 
enemy, as to the tendency of this doctrine and its 
necessity to human government! If it were obliter- 
ated from the minds of men, would human society be 
endurable? A murderer, not long since, as he stood 
upon the scaffold, said to the crowd at his feet: “I 
am guilty, doubly guilty. I have no apology and no 
regret. I have sought pleasure to the utmost at every 
sense. I have satiated every appetite, and gratified, 
without limit, every passion. I have done it deliber- 
ately and understandingly ; for I believe there is noth- 
ing beyond the grave, and, therefore, no judgment 
and no hell.” 

Wherever future punishments are rarely alluded 
to in public instruction, what is the result upon the 
Church? Superficial conviction and conversion, an 
easy piety, an accommodating and inactive member- 
ship, between whom and the surrounding population 
but little difference is discernible, and a generation 
growing up worldly, reckless, God-defying. Wherever 
the penalties of the law are lowered, the conception of 
the heinousness of sin, the depravity of nature, and 
the value of redemption are lowered also. 

A system into which this doctrine enters, under- 


158 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


lies the piety of the Church in all ages. It is, in the | 


language of Dr. Hodge, “the great granitic formation 
whose peaks tower toward heaven, and draw thence 
the waters of life, and in whose capacious bosom re- 
pose those green pastures in which the Great Shep- 
herd gathers and sustains his flock.” The powerful 
revivals of the past occurred under the preaching 
both of the Law and the Gospel. Such was that of 
Massilon, Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Wesley, Jonathan Ed- 
wards, Payson, and Whitefield. Speaking of the last, 
the Pennsylvania Gazette of 1739 says: “On Thurs- 
day last, the Rev. Mr. Whitefield left this city and 
was accompanied to Chester by one hundred and fifty 
horse, and preached to seven thousand people. On 
Friday he preached twice at Willingstown to about 
five thousand; on Saturday, at Newcastle, to about 
two thousand five hundred; and the same evening, at 
Christiana Bridge, to about three thousand. On Sun- 
day, at White Clay Creek, he preached twice, resting 
about half an hour between the sermons, to about 
eight thousand, of whom three thousand, it is com- 
puted, came on horseback. It rained most of the 
time and yet they stood in the open air.’ During 
his progress, some of the newspapers reported that he 
preached to twenty-five thousand at once. 

What was Azs doctrine? for, though it was his 
eloquence that attracted, it was the truth he uttered 
that zwzpressed the people. His enemies wondered 
that people should so follow and reverence a man 
who called them to their faces “half-devil”—a plain 
proof that he taught the doctrine of human de- 
pravity, even as our blessed Lord, who said, “ From 


ie 
SS 


se 


FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 159 


within, out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, adul- 
teries, murders,” etc. Infidels said he “shook his 
fellow-men over the pit of hell”—a conclusive evi- 
dence that he preached the doctrine of future punish- 
ment. But what were the effects of his preaching? 
Let us hear the testimony of a sagacious though not 
religious observer. Dr. Franklin says: “It-was won- 
derful to see the change made in the manners of our 
inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent 
about religion, it seemed as if all the world were 
becoming religious; so that one could not walk 
through the town in an evening without hearing 
psalms sung in different families of every street.” 

The longer I live the more I am impressed with 
the depravity of human nature and the danger of an 
impenitent heart. We may ¢a/k of natural goodness, 
but not find it; we may ¢heorize about infant regen- 
eration, but not trust to it. Inclined as I have been 
to take amiable views of humanity, and if not to 
prophesy smooth things, at least keep back dreadful 
ones, I confess I see the folly of trying to be wise 
above what is written, and the necessity of using the 
law as a schoolmaster. 

But one cries, I can not bear the thought of 
eternal pains. You need not. Hell was not dug for 
man, but for the devil and his angels. If any man 
goes there, he will be a perverse zztruder. Nor can he 
press his way thither without marking his path by 
the blood of the Covenant; for Christ has laid his 
Cross athwart the human sinner’s path to perdition. 

Let none of us say, “The harvest is past, the 
Summer is ended, and we are not saved.” Let 


~ 


160. EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


not unavailing cries call forth even from merciful 
Heaven the reproach, “ Because I called and ye re- 
fused ; all the day long I stretched forth my hand, and 
no man regarded.” Now, all invites; the Spirit and 
the bride say, Come; Heaven and earth say, Come. 
Let him that heareth say, Come; and whosoever will, 
let him come. The Father bends over you with 
bowels of compassion, and asks, Why will you die? 
The Savior from his cross cries, come unto me all 
ye that labor, and I will give you rest. The Spirit 
knocks, waiting long for entrance. | 


VII. 
NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 


W* are under laws both of virtue and piety, 
enforced by penalties running through two 
States, the present and the future. The importance 
of obedience to these laws must be apparent to 
every one. To him who looks no further than the 
present life, they are commended by considerations 
of health, happiness, honor, and prosperity; to him 
who looks above the skies, by the unspeakable re- 
wards of eternity. Nothwithstanding the obvious 
importance of this obedience, mankind rarely render 
it. This is clear from the entire history of the race, 
account for it as we may. If there is any thing that 
can correct this manifest perversity, it is infinitely 
desirable. To find this reforming agency without 
the Gospel,-has been the problem of the ages. The 
experiments of mankind with this view may be 
grouped under three heads—government, education, 
and religions of human invention. A few words on 
each of these in order. 

I. And first of government. “Human nature is 
bad,” cries the statesman ; “because it has had a bad 
chance ; wickedness springs from poverty and igno- 
rance ; righteousness will issue from competence and 
knowledge ; these from public justice, and this from 


a liberal and paternal government.’ “No,” cries 
é 161 


162 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


-_ 


another ; “man, weak and erring, needs the hand of 
a master to guide him; human government has not 
been sufficiently severe. We need a more vigilant 
and effective police, a more prompt and unsparing 
judiciary, and a more severe criminal code.” Make 
your experiments, then. Alas! you have been mak- 
ing them, in all lands, for the last six thousand 
years. And what has been the result? Grant that 
one government is better than another, that a bad 
government may seriously interfere with the progress, 
happiness, and prosperity of the people, and a good 
government promote them all; grant that we have 
reason to rejoice at the progress of liberal principles, 
the undermining of Asiatic despotisms, the break- 
ing up of caste, the gradual elevation of Turkey, the 
deliverance of Greece, the emancipation of American 
republics, the advance of free government in Italy 
and Spain, the decay of servile, moribund, priest- 
ridden Austria, the freedom of Hungary, and the 
enlargement of vigorous, progressive, Protestant Prus- 
sia, until it has come to be the presiding power of 
Germany,—still, there is a deep philosophy in the 
celebrated couplet of Dr. Johnson: 


“ How small, of all that human hearts endure, 
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.” 


The virtue and piety of the people lie beneath the 
reach of civil government and beyond its scope. Its 
purpose is to protect, not to reform society; it can 
reach only to the actions of men, not the springs 
whence they issue; its lictors are mortal, its fasces 
material. 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 163 


We have had all forms and degrees of govern- 
ment, and vice and impiety alike under them all. 
Monarchies of every degree, from that of the Asiatic 
despot to that of the limited English queen; aris- 
tocracies, in all their varieties; and republics, from 
the democracy, where every man goes with his weapon 
_to the capitol, to that which is federative and repre- 
sentative, have all exhibited the most scandalous in- 
iquity.. So that government, whether weak or strong, 
with the merciful laws of Solon, or the sanguinary 
code of Draco, in this form or in that, can not secure 
man’s obedience to God’s laws. Indeed, the shape 
of the government seems to have but little influence 
upon the wirtue of the subjects. Greece was as 
wicked under her rude democracy as under the iron 
rule of Philip; Rome, under Sylla, as bad as Rome 
under Nero; Carthage on one shore, as her op- 
pressor on the other; France under the republic, as 
France under the emperor. If there are republics 
in our day better than these, there are monarchies 
also; and the improvement is due to other causes 
than the form of the governments. Nor can we our- 
selves boast. We have, indeed, a model republic, 
formed with the experience of all ages before us, 
formed in a new world, under the blessings of an 
enlightened Christian civilization, and by men of 
rare wisdom and patriotism. Yet have we universal 

virtue? Let the cabals, the chicanery, the decep- 
— tions of our elections, the bribery and corruption of 
our capitals, and the mobs of our cities, answer. 

Under every form of government, some of the 
subjects are favored with all the advantages it can 

15 


~ 


164 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


bestow—liberty, power, honor. Are these perfect in 
virtue? Is the palace more likely than the cottage 
to present an example of holiness? Are the op- 
pressed always destitute of goodness? Are not they 
the most likely to furnish its sublimest exhibitions ? 
What of the Waldenses, the Puritans, and the suf- 
ferers from whom all civil rights are taken, and who 
nevertheless 


*‘ Read their titles clear 
To mansions in the skies ?” 


Virtue and piety are neither to be secured nor 
crushed out by any form of government. “ True,” 
says one; “ take away all government, civil and eccle- 
siastical, let there be neither king nor priest, and 
nature will assume her proper grace and motion. 
Alas! anarchy has too often been tried. There is no 
government which is not preferable to it—none in 
which depravity is so fearfully developed, and earth ex- 
hibits such a picture of hell. Indeed, it is impossible 
for society to exist for any length of time in this con- 
dition, The reformation of man is not to be effected 
by political improvements. Draw your picture of a 
lovely island, with no rulers but the people, free from 
famine and vice, and glowing with the smiles of lib- 
erty; but you shall never realize the golden dream 
without something more than the statesman’s art. 

There is a favorite scheme for making men vir- 
tuous by favorable external circumstances. It is to 
bring families, fortunes, labors, enjoyments, to a 
level, make all resources common, and mete out 
from the general stock an equal portion to each 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 165 


individual, demanding from him in return only such 
service as he may be able conveniently to render. 
This is the theory: Man, having adequate food, 
shelter, clothing, exercise, company, and books, will 
be comfortable ; being comfortable, he will have no 
temptation to vice, and therefore must needs be vir- 
tuous. Here is equality, and therefore a cure for 
envy and jealousy; here is freedom from wrongs, 
and therefore from ill-will and revenge; here is lib- 
erty, and with it deliverance from all political dis- 
quietude, scheming, and rebellion; here is fraternity, 
and with it a cessation of all the conflicts of avarice, 
pride, and ambition ; here is assurance of future good, 
as well as present, and a consequent emancipation 
from all care, anxiety, and covetousness, 

Beautiful Utopia! but not written either in the 
human heart or human history. Wherever there are 
passions and the means of unlawful gratification, there 
is liability to sin. Nothing can prevent but the re- 
straints either of law or religion. Communism pre- 
sents us with both the conditions necessary for sin, 
without either of the restraints. And the results of 
its experiments are answerable to this view. Before 
them the Garden of Eden, behind them a desolate 
wilderness. Virtue is not dependent upon favorable 
external circumstances. Witness those who were sawn 
asunder, stoned, tempted, slain with the sword ; who 
wandered in sheep-skins and goat-skins, destitute, 
afflicted, tormented; yet out of weakness were made 
strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the 
armies of aliens; and those who in much patience, in 
afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in 


166 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


_imprisonment, in tumults, in labors, in watchings, in 
fastings, were co-workers with God. And what shall 
we say of the daughters of the dairyman and the 
shepherd of the plain? That there are circumstances 
in which a community of goods is proper, will not be 
denied. Such were those of the infant Church at 
Jerusalem. The destruction of the city had been pre- 
dicted, and was hourly expected; persecution was 
raging against the Christians, and there was no tell- 
-ing what an hour would bring forth. To gather to- 
gether possessions, put property into the hands of 
faithful trustees, supply the wants of all from the 
common stock, and stand in waiting to depart, was 
the dictate of prudence. But that the Scriptures do 
not ezjozn such an arrangement is clear, and that they 
imply a different order is evident from precepts which 
enjoin hospitality, econcmy, liberality, etc., which all 
presuppose an unequal distribution of property. Nor 
have we any inspired intimation that communism 
is a means of reformation. It has long been tried. 
Among Buddhists, the priests have vainly sought sanc- 
tity by renouncing marriage and property. Among 
the ancient Jews, the Essenes formed a community in 
the desert near the Dead Sea, and the Therapeutz 
another, near Lake Meeris, in Egypt; but without 
the expected results. The history of the monks of 
the early Church, of the Beghards, and the Beguines, 
and the Brethren of the Free Spirit, do not encour- 
age the hope of attaining holiness by socialistic or 
communistic schemes. Since the Reformation, the 
Heavenly Prophets, the Anabaptists, the Libertines 
and the Familists, have given additional and most 


Pet i eG eee 


alii 


\ 


OO a a a7 


\ 


/ 


oe — a | eS 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 167 


melancholy proof of the folly of these experiments. 
Who does not loathe such paradises ? 

Nor have communities, formed on political bases, 
fared any better. They were tried in Greece under 
the most favorable auspices, by the Pythagoreans, 
They were advocated by Plato, who regards the pos- 
session of private property as the source of egotism, 
avarice, low character, in fine, of every evil to the state; 
and, in his draft of a constitution for a community, he 
subjects the two ruling classes to compulsory com- 
munism both of women and property, the former un- 
der certain restrictions, allowing property only to the 
third and lowest of the classes into which he divides 
the State, but his system could not be put into prac- 
tice. In modern times, such communities have usu- 
ually been founded either by enthusiasts or infidels. 
St. Simon was little better thana madman. After a 
career of folly, he is brought into trouble, to rescue 
himself from which, he attempts to shoot himself. 
The ball not taking effect, the vain philosopher be- 
comes a prophet of the law of love. “God raises him 
from the abyss, sheds over him a religious inspiration 
which animates, sanctifies, and renews his whole be- 
ing ; a hymn of love is poured forth from his mutil- 
ated body, and the new Christianity is sent into the 
world.” The basis of his system is a new mode of the 
distribution of property, by substituting the right of 
capacity for that of inheritance. A society was or- 
ganized upon the plan, but was soon scattered. The 
skeptical Robert Owen made more hopeful efforts at 
New Lanark and New Harmony; but what was the 
issue? The philosophical Fourier revived the scheme, 


168 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


but the experiments made, with all the light of his 
science and philosophy, are, as we learn, miserable 
failures. And what shall we say of the Brook Farm 
and of the Oneida Brethren—the former a subject of 
ridicule, the later of odium ? 

Far from dispensing with religion, communities can 
not be kept together long without a religious bond of 
some sort, such as we find among the Shakers, and in 
that strange community at Economy, whose chief was 
a priest and whose members are believers; or that 
more strange community at Brockton, who maintain 
separate families and belief in Christ, but who have 
debased the Scriptural doctrine of communion with 
God into a material contact, and perverted it to physi- 
ological uses. All such communities, if they endure, 
become despotic, and thus interfere with development 
of peculiar gifts by withholding the appropriate re- 
wards intended to call them forth. How poor in com- 
parison of the Divine order, the State, the Church, 
and the family, with all its precious blessings, endear- 
ing ties, and hallowing memories—an order allowing 
the highest liberty to individual man consistently with 
the rights of others! 

II. Another plan for reforming men is by educa- 
tion. The experiment has been tried in a variety 
of ways. 

1. Ethical education has been tried. Teach men 
moral duties, and they will discharge them. Such is 
the theory. China has been the great field of this 
experiment—an experiment reaching through: thou- 
sands of years. No nation takes more pains to educate 
its people; its system of competitive examination is 


ms FoR 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 169 


perfect ; the honors it bestows upon the successful can- 
didate are almost incredible. Not only his own family 
and friends, but whole provinces, join to celebrate his 
praises. As might be expected, the system stimulates 
the mind. Men frequently study ten, twenty, thirty, 
forty, even fifty years, in hope of literary distinction, 
and, in many cases, study themselves dead. Nor is 
the system ill-conceived ; it embraces arithmetic and 
mathematics, in the former of which, the Chinese ex- 
cel all others. But what is more to our purpose, it lays 
great stress upon the economical and moral sciences, 
those which, it may be supposed, are best fitted to 
make a people virtuous. The philosophy of Franklin 
has been here exemplified on the largest scale. The 
system of Confucius is embodied in five precepts, 
namely: justice, truth, charity, sincerity, and con- 
formity to established institutions; and three laws: 
the law of the family, the law of the state, and the 
law of the universe. It merges all feelings in filial 
piety, all duties in filial obedience. The sovereign is 
the father of the people, and his will their only rule. 
Its leading principle is: All moral evil springs from 
the antagonisms of superiors and inferiors ; the cure 
of these antagonisms is the radical virtue; that radi- 
cal virtue is filial obedience. The theory does not 
go deep enough. “From within, out of the heart, 
proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,’ etc. 

Politically, what may we expect from such a system 
but stability without progress? And there stands 
China, though nearly half the human race is within 
her boundaries, with scarce one step of progress since 
the days of Confucius. 


170 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


But what are the fruits of the system within the- 
sphere of morality? To those who know any thing of 
‘the opium-trade, I need not speak of the intemper- 
ance of China. But this is among the least of its 
crimes. Heretofore, while secluded from the rest of 
the world, it was supposed to be remarkably moral ; 
but recent disclosures have dissipated this delusion, 
and made us congratulate the nations that Providence 
closed the gates so long upon a great moral pest- 
house. If anywhere the obscenities and cruelties of 
the Sepoy rebellion can be matched, it is in China. 
Treachery, suicide, infanticide, concubinage prevail. 
The Governor Yeh sentenced to death seventy thou- 
sand fellow-men. Idolatry is appalling; the gods 
number fifty millions, and the worship, beneath floral 
and poetic decorations, is shameless and cruel. 

2. The metaphysical system of education has been 
tried with no better success. This is the theory: 
Human depravity results from the preponderance ‘of 
the grosser elements of our nature over the spiritual. 
Hence, the body must be subdued and the soul called 
in from the senses; the mind must be engaged in 
abstract meditation and arduous thought, or rapt in 
gorgeous visions and lofty contemplation. The theory 
overlooks the fact that depravity is not seated either 
in the zvztellect or the dody, but in the heart. 

India, from its icy summits to its burning seas, 
was the theater of this experiment. Its philosophy 
was the most grand and gorgeous in the world; it in- 
spired ancient Greece, and still attracts modern Eu- 
rope. And what have been its fruits? Caste, mo- 
nasticism, oppression, stagnation, cruelty. Never were 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 171 


greater atrocities than those of the great Indian rebel- 
lion—outrages which the English language is incom- 
petent to describe, and which no Christian tongue 
dares utter to Christian ear—committed not by the 
lower classes only, but by the learned and refined, who 
originated and superintended the insurrection. 

Individuals sometimes carry this theory to its ut- 
most limits. They retire from society, and subject 
themselves to protracted privation and severe torture, 
as if, by reducing social enjoyment and physical power 
to their 222mum, they could raise the spiritual to 
its maximum. J have seen the fakir sitting upon 
sharp stones, under a vow to remain there seven years 
without uttering one word. But what-is the result? 
Either there are moments in which, secretly, the press- 
ure is relaxed, the muscles are-relieved, and the pas- 
sions run rampant, or, if the isolation is perfect, the 
powers are paralyzed. The pressure of the world is 
as necessary to the health of the soul as that of the 
atmosphere to the health of the body. 

They relate that one day a balloon arose on the 
western edge of the plain of England. A mile up, it 
encountered a stratum of cloud a thousand feet thick. 
Emerging from this, it ascended the clear, deep blue. 
Four miles above earth, a pigeon let loose dropped 
down as if dead. Higher up, profound silence, awful 
depths—sunshine falling through fields it could not 
warm! Five miles above earth, every thing freezes ; 
the air is too thin to support life; the explorer, watch- 
ing his instruments, finds his eye grow dim. He tries 
to reach a flask of brandy lying near him; but his arm 
can not obey his will; he tries to call his comrade, 


~ 


172 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


who is steering, but no sound issues from his lips. 
The steersman comes into the car; he seizes the valve 
to let out the gas; his hands are purple and paralyzed 
with cold ; he applies his teeth; it opens a little, once, 
twice, thrice; the balloon begins to descend, and 
the swooned explorer returns to consciousness. One 
minute more of inaction on the part of the steersman, 
whose senses were failing, and the air-ship would have 
floated, God knows how long, with its two frozen 
corpses, in the wide realms of space. So with those 
who, by closed senses and suffering flesh, and social 
isolation and mental crucifixion, seek to raise a Babel 
by which they may pierce the skies and pluck holiness 
from heaven. 

3. Then there is the experiment of zsthetic cul- 
ture. This is the theory: Delicacy of taste heightens 
our feelings of pleasure or pain. Whatever does 
this, increases our sympathy. Sympathy invites com- 
munication, and communication of joys and sorrows 
produces good-will and affection. Moreover, a relish 
for external beauty creates a relish for moral beauty. 
If passion overbears it for a time, there is a reaction © 
which gives it increased strength; and thus, under 
the double influence of delight, both in order and 
regularity, and an experience of the inconvenience 
and pain of the contrary, man is moved forward in 
the path of rectitude. “It is through the beautiful, 
that door of dawn,” says Schiller, “that we are to 
enter the land of moral freedom.” Greece and Rome 
were the theaters of this experiment. We grant that 
judicious education in all forms tends to virtue, and 
zesthetic culture especially; but the highest art and 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 17s 


refinement constitute but a feeble barrier against the 
passions. Go to Dahomey, Ashantee, Caffraria, Ma- 
laisia—anywhere; search out the rudest people on 
earth, draw a picture of its vices and cruelties, make 
it as black as you can, and we will parallel it by pic- 
tures of Greece under Pericles, and of Rome under 
Cicero. . Athens, mother of arts, eye of Greece, 
counted under the shadow of her Acropolis her 
thirty thousand gods. In the streets and courts, 
where the marble almost breathed under the chisel _ 
of Pheidias, and birds pecked at the grapes on the 
canvas of Apelles; where Plato, Demosthenes, and 
Thucydides, cast their grand thoughts in a style 
of such transparent beauty,—in Athens, proud 
school-mistress of mankind, were scenes of dark- 
ness and lust and blood, horrible as any nation on 
earth has ever presented. The Eternal City, proud 
conqueror of the world, was no better. All this 
could easily be proved from Suetonius, Horace, Ju- 
venal, Tacitus; but we give you, as better than all, 
the testimony of an intelligent and observant trav- 
eler, who says: “ Professing themselves to be wise, 
they became fools, and changed the glory of the 
incorruptible God into an image like to corruptible 
man, and to four-footed beasts, and creeping things. 
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, 
to dishonor their own bodies between themselves ; 
who changed the truth of God into a lie, and wor- 
shiped and served the creature more than the Cre- 
ator, who is blessed for evermore. For this cause, 
God gave them up unto vile affections ; for even 
their women did change the natural use into that 


174 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


which is against nature; and likewise, also, the men, 
leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in 
their lust one toward another; men with men, work- 
‘ing that which is unseemly, and receiving in them- 
selves that recompense of their error which was 
mech igi. fe “Being ‘filled, 2sete;.' Whis/mark wis 
not a description of the Five-points of Athens, or 
of Rome, but of the Broadway of Greece, the Regent 
Street of the Eternal City, the very garrison of that 
army of genius that is marching down the ages at- 
tracting mankind by the majesty of its movements, 
and charming it with the music of its silver bugles. 
When Nero’s father was congratulated upon his son’s 
birth, he said, ‘What is born of such a father as 
I, and such a mother as my wife, can only be the 
ruin of the State.” When his mother became the 
wife of the Emperor Claudius, her own uncle—a man, 
stupid, drunken, licentious, cruel, oppressive, who had 
put to death his wife, Messalina, on a charge of mur- 
der, and was drunk when he signed the warrant—she 
soon set about murdering him, that she might put 
her own son, Nero, in his place, and was ere long 
rewarded by being murdered by that. son, one of the 
best men of the times, Seneca, being in the matri- 
cide’s plot, and dying soon after by the tyrant’s hand. 
Such was the imperial palace when Paul crossed its 
courts. 

On the revival of learning in the Medicean era, 
when art and science flourished in Italy, as they 
have never done since, and ~adorned society with 
an unparalleled elegance of manners and refinement 
of education, we see, also, an unheard-of licentious- 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 175 


ness of life and corruption of character. The Pla- 
tonic philosophy took the place of Christianity ; the 
heathen spirit ruled ; and pagan immorality disgraced 
both the court and the confessional. Savans re- 
proached each other with unnameable crimes; the 
jests of Poggius, unequaled in vulgarity and vicious- 
ness, went through twenty editions in thirty years ; 
even the vices of the clergy surpassed descrip- 
tion, and the Lateran Council, in 1513, deemed it 
necessary to argue anew the immortality of the 
soul. Perhaps it may be said that there is better 
education to make men virtuous; namely, that of 
modern Europe or of the United States. Thither 
let us go, then, and inquire whether the man, the 
family, the province becomes virtuous in the degree 
in which it becomes wise. Is there no vice in those 
great centers of light, London, Paris, Washington, 
the most luminous spots of their respective coun- 
tries? But is not that vice in the lower levels of so- 
ciety, where darkness prevails even in the blaze of sur- 
rounding light? True, vice, in the grosser and more 
patent forms, is there. And whence did it come? 
Often it is the sequence of the arts and seductions 
of higher circles. The sewers take their rise in the 
palace-drains. Ascend to the mountain-tops of so- 
ciety, where the lights of science beam like the 
fires of the ancient temple, day and night: you 
will find vice and crime more concealed and refined, 
and more seductive, too; but not less pernicious or 
abundant ; while the more spiritual iniquity, such as 
vanity, ambition, and, above all, pride—which rent 
neaven and opened hell—is obvious and raging. It 


176 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


is a significant fact that Bacon, who unfolded all the 
gates of modern European science, is not inaptly de- 
scribed, in a single verse of Pope, as 


** Greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind.” 


And what shall we say of Shelley, Keats, Byron? 
Splendid, but 
“Weary, worn, and wretched things, 


Scorched and desolate, and blasted souls, 
A gloomy wilderness of dying thought.” 


But, it may be said, we have not yet touched the 
true theory of salvation by education. This is a very 
recent discovery. It is to reform men by means of 
the natural sciences, namely: natural philosophy, 
anatomy, physiology, hygiene, phrenology, political 
economy. And this is the argument: Man always 
acts according to his views of what is for his own 
interest. Obedience to natural law is for his in- 
terest. Education in the science of nature proves 
this; therefore, it will d7zzg and dzzd man to virtue. 
This reasoning is founded on false premises. It is 
not true that man always acts with a view to his 
own interest. The idle youth £zows that he is for- 
feiting a rich inheritance and earning a sad future. 
The thief £zows that honesty is the best policy. The 
drunkard £uows, ay, better than you, that the cup is 
bitter—that it is ruin to body, soul, fortune, char- 
acter—disaster for time, and eternity, too; and yet 
he raises his trembling hand. The premise being 
false, the reasoning fails. Even if the falsity of the 
premise could not be shown, facts would overthrow 
the conclusion. Are men reformed and converted 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 177 


by the science of nature? Do they become good 
in proportion as they study Dunglison and Combe? 
What moral reformations have been produced by the 
aposties of natural law? Who more perfect in this 
than the late chemist, Dr. Webster, who committed 
the highest crime known to the law? And were 
Palmer and Smethurst his inferiors, either in knowl- 
edge or crime? 

Perhaps you say, Let us blend modern and ancient | 
knowledge, the knowledge of the East and that of the 
West, to get a combination that will insure virtue. 
You have it in the Nana Sahib, familiar alike with 
the grand philosophy and traditional lore of India, 
and with the languages, sciences, and literature of 
Western and modern Europe; and yet so intense 
and unparalleled his treachery, that it has been seri- 
ously proposed, if he can be caught, to cage him as 
a wild beast, and exhibit him in a menagerie. 

Do not understand us to depreciate education and 
knowledge. They are good, very good—the more we 
have, the better. Let them be diffused the earth 
around ; they refine, quicken, and qualify, and gird 
us for duty. But let us not substitute them for re- 
ligion. The Armstrong gun may be a grand in- 
strument to sweep the foe from the shore, but a 
worthless one in plowing or reaping the fields. We 
have already said that education and knowledge tend 
to restrain vice and promote religion, but they are 
utterly unable to resist the tide of human depravity. 

III. The last mode of reforming men is by re- 
ligions of human invention. These are three: idola- 
try, Mohammedism, and deism. 


178 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


1. We might suppose that turning from the true 
God to worship false ones would degrade and injure 
the human race. a. Idolatry, regarding the different 
countries, mountains, and fountains of the world as 
under the government of different gods, loses the 
idea of a universal, immutable, moral rule, and comes 
easily to regard an act as virtuous on one side of a 
stream and vicious on the other. 46. It weakens the 
motive to moral obedience. The gods are frail; one 
is a rake, another a liar, a third a drunkard, a fourth 
a thief. Such, being objects of worship, lure to sin. 
c. As idolatry can not bear investigation, it represses 
inquiry, fosters ignorance, and hates or banishes or 
poisons such men as Socrates, who lead the multi- 
tude to think. ad It grows worse and worse with 
advancing ages, alike as respects the character of its 
gods, the nature of its worship, and the number of 
its idols, until it saturates men with sin, and makes 
the gods more numerous and vile than they. Re- 
garding mankind not as children of a common 
Father, but as the spawn of inferior divinities, and 
as having different natures and opposing interests, it 
alienates men from each other. A recent Japanese 
writer opposes the Christian religion, because it 
teaches the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood 
of man. 

The religious systems of ancient Babylon, Egypt, 
Greece, and Rome have long since been abandoned ; 
nor has any attempt been made, since the days of 
Julian, to revive them. The idols have been thrown 
from their pedestals, and the ruins of the temples 
are objects of curiosity. They proved worthless, and 


Ss 


NECESSITY OF TIlE GOSPEL. 179 


worse. The religions of India, China, and Japan— 
Hindodism, Confucianism, and Buddhism—are all de- 
caying. Without satisfying the wants or reforming 
the lives of men, they hinder human development, 
and must be swept from the earth by the car of 
progress. They know no salvation this side the 
grave, but the annihilation of all care for others, and 
of all interest in this world, its duties and oppor- 
tunities; and none beyond it but extinction of all 
memory and consciousness—a “blowing out” as of 
a candle. 

The legitimate results of all are ignorance, des- 
potism, the oppression of women, and the depression 
of the masses. 

2. Let us pass to Mohammedism. That there is 
something pure in the teaching and sublime in the 
career of Mohammed, we allow; but its licentious 
prophet, its revengeful spirit, its seclusion of woman 
from society and exclusion of her from the sanctuary ; 
its preference of the ceremonial to the moral ; its tol- 
eration of both slavery and polygamy ; above all, its 
want of an atonement, and the causality of its para- 
dise, show at once how inadequate it is either to 
reveal or enforce the laws of virtue; while the con- 
dition of the lands, from the Philippine Islands to 
the pillars of Hercules, over which, for a thousand 
years, it has swayed either its scepter or its sword, 
is a fearful illustration of this remark. The pilgrim- 
age to Mecca, the surrounding of the Kaaba, the 
kissing of the black stone, the drinking of the holy 
well of Zernzein, and the visit to the sacred mounts 


of Zofa ard Arafat, are, if not idolatrous, at least 
16 


180 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


inconsistent with that worship which is “in spirit and 
in truth.” : | 

Terrible oppression, horrid cruelty, vices not to 
be named, oppressive taxation, and incestuous cus- 
toms, follow every-where the footfall of Islamism. 

We are told, however, that there is a better re- 
ligion—theism, or deism. It is without any creed. 
We grant that deists often present us with a sound 
theology and a pure morality; but whence do they 
derive it? Reason, we know, can verify true theology 
and morals; but can it adzscover them? Why, then, 
are they not found outside the sphere of Christian 
teaching? How soon does deism, when it leaves 
the Christian temple, become a Babel? Is God sep- 
arate from his works or mingled with them, coming 
-to consciousness in man? Is the Deity material or 
spiritual ?. Is the human soul mortal or immortal? 
Is the universe a creation, or a development? Is 
there a spiritual world? Is man responsible, or is 
he a creature of necessity, all his errors and crimes 
being so many steps in his progress to perfection ? 
Is God to be worshiped ? 

On all these points it were easy to cite opposite 
opinions from the highest authority among the high- 
priests of natural religion, and even upon such ques- 
tions as suicide, polygamy, fornication ; e. g., Comte 
and Darwin, and their school—material pantheists— 
say, “The sum total of material things is God.” 
Hegel and his school—sfiritual pantheists—say, 
“The sum total of spzrit is God.” Both have a finite 
God, for the universe is finite; both have a variable 
one, for the world is ever changing; both have a 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 181 


contingent one, for upon their hypothesis, if the uni- 
verse were annihilated, God would cease to be. On 
the other hand, Paine and Parker say that God tran- 
scends matter and spirit, and is different in nature 
from the material universe. Lord Herbert taught 
fidelity to the marriage covenant. Hume thought 
female infidelity a small thing when known; when 
unknown, nothing. True Christzans also differ ; but 
there stand the Law and the Gospel, steady as the 
~ summits of Sinai and Calvary. 

Deism has no authority. Suppose deists set¢le 
their creed, how shall they enforce it? A purely 
scientific question may be settled by reasoning; a 
purely mathematical one, by demonstration; but a 
moral principle which runs athwart the interests, cus- 
toms, and passions of depraved nature, requires some- 
thing more, even in those who are qualified for ab- 
stract reasoning. Men may say, The argument appears 
sound, and we can not overthrow it; but some one 
of greater power may come after us who shall 
demonstrate its fallacy. 

Deism has no salvation. It has neither promise 
of pardon, nor help for human infirmity, nor solace 
for the sorrows of life, nor light for the darkness of 
death. The more perfect our conceptions of God, if 
we have no mode of reconciliation to him, the more 
awful does he become, even a consuming fire. One 
glance of his majesty and purity is enough to drive 
back the naked, approaching soul into the distance 
of its natural estrangement. The more perfect our 
conceptions of Divine law, if we have no sustaining 
moral force, the greater is our remorse for the past 


182 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


and our discouragement for the future. It is not su 
much ézght that we need as help. 

It is unpractical. On this point we. are not left 
to reason. Natural religion has been Zested. When 
tried by the ancient sages, it produced so little effect 
that they did not even mention it to the multitude. 
It was esoteric. We have, indeed, infidels whose lives 
and spirit are good, but do they not owe their excel- 
lences to their Christian culture and Christian friends? 
We have had infidels of profound knowledge and sur- 
passing eloquence, but what have they done? Hume 
thought he had demonstrated that miracles are not 
possible; Voltaire that he had crushed the wretch; the 
French encyclopedists that they had proved that all 


man’s life, animal and intellectual, might be traced to © 


matter and motion., But where are they, and their 
famous folios, to-day ? and what good would they do 
should men receive them? Theodore Parker thought 
himself great—the pioneer of a religion that should 
last a thousand years. Living, he proclaimed himself 
superior to Jesus ; and dying, he stroked his forehead, 
as he looked in the mirror, and said, “ Noble head! it 
ought to have accomplished something for the world.” 
But what new laws has he established? what enlarge- 
ment has he given to truth, justice, or charity ? what 
higher development to mankind? what richer joy to 
individual, social, or national life? what purer worship 
or higher hopes to human hearts? what treasures has 
he communicated from heaven to earth? 

Natural religion was tried in France, the most sci- 
entific and refined of modern nations—tried under the 


most favorable circumstances. After the Churches 


RO ws 


NECESSITY OF THE GOSPEL. 183 


had been overthrown, the priesthood disendowed, 
Christianity denationalized and denounced,—then de- 
ism entered cathedrals ready built, adopting the ablest 
lectures, the best musicians, and the most attractive 
liturgy and emblematic ceremonies. What was the 
result? You know; I know; God knows. Would 
you have the experiment repeated ? 

Man is fallen; Christ has redeemed him. As im- 
pulse and attraction are the pillars of the material 
universe, so love to God and to man are the supports 
on which repose the moral universe; and Christ re- 
stores both to our world. We are shut up to the Cross. 
The more we examine history, the more clearly will it 
appear, that as God ordained the mountains to wrestle 
with the storms and screen the valleys, to gather the 
snows of centuries, and give freshness to the streams 
and greenness to the plains below, so hath he given 
Christ—a great rock in a weary land, a covert from 
the tempest of Divine justice, receiving through the 
ages the snows of Divine mercy, and melting them 
for the green pastures and still waters of God’s peace- 
ful flock—a rock against which wicked men and devils 
have breathed their empty curses, in vain, for eighteen 
hundred years. 

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the 
Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and 
ever shall be, world without end! 


Vill. 
ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 


LTHOUGH religion rests upon higher obliga- 

tions than interest, yet God, in his goodness, 
has made our interest and our duty coincident. It 
may not be amiss to show that religion is profitable, 
and especially on occasions when men are apt to com- 
plain of its burdens. 

I. The expenses of religion are small in them- 
selves. The Methodist Episcopal Church, for exam- 
ple, probably spends $9,000 a day for church build- 
ings— $3,295,000 a year. It pays for salaries of 
clergymen—six thousand six hundred and eighty-nine 
effective men, $500 per annum, each—$3,344,500. It 
pays, say, $1,000,000 a year for missions, though 
more than half of this should be reckoned in with sup- . 
port of ministers, as it goes for domestic missions ; 
suppose for all other causes, $1,000,000. Add these 
sums, and estimating our membership at one million, 
you have about 2.08 cents per diem, for each mem- 
ber, as our total expenses for religion. Moreover, 
if we count only four contributors to one communi- 
cant, we have less than half a cent a day to each per- 
son enjoying the benefits of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church, in the United States—a country where wages 


are higher than anywhere else—as the average cost 
185 


186 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


not only of supporting the Christian religion, but also 
of propagating it to the ends of the earth. F ifty mill- 
ions a year is spent by all the churches of the United 
States, one dollar and forty-three cents for each in- 
habitant, a little over half a cent a day. 

II. The expenses of religion are small compara- 
tively. Compare religious fired capital with secular. 
By the census of 1860 we have $171,392,432 as the 
value of the church property of all denominations in 
the land—a value that has been,accumulating for two 
hundred and forty-eight years. By the same census, 
the total valuation of property in the United States is 
estimated at $16,000,000,000. The annual produc- 
tion is $4,000,000,000. One hundred and seventy- 
one dollars for God, against sixteen thousand for the 
world. Compare churches with railroads. The total 
value of railroad property in the Union, according to - 
the Bureau of Statistics, is $1,654,050,799. One hun- 
dred and seventy-one dollars for salvation, sixteen 
hundred for commerce. iTS oe 

A single iron-clad of the navy cost between one 
and two millions. No church on the continent, open- 
ing its trumpets of truth, so costly as a single ship of 
the line, opening its useless mouths of death, 

From fixed capital turn to circulating or annual 
expenses. The cost of supporting the clergy in the 
United States, by the last census, is six millions per 
annum. How small compared with some other 
expenses ! 

The fees of the lawyers are thirty-five millions 
of dollars. Let us not depreciate this honorable pro- 
fession, which, marking a high standard of civilization 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 187 


and possessing fine acquirements, is worthy of its 
reward, as well for its influence upon community as 
for its services to clients. But are not the ministry 
entitled to like reward? Is it fair to give to thirty- 
three thousand one hundred and ninety-three lawyers, 
thirty-five millions a year, and to thirty-seven thou- 
sand clergymen, only six millions? Is it any won- 
der that young men shrink from the sacred calling 
until forced to it by the fear of losing their souls? 
We have made comparisons with a class that deserves 
respect; let us turn to one that does not—our. crim- 
inals—the cost of supporting whom is, annually, twelve 
millions of dollars. Can there be any doubt that if 
more were given to the pulpit less would be needed 
for the prisons ? 

Let us descend from human creatures to brutes ; 
not useful, but useless ones—our dogs—which by the 
census are said to cost sixteen millions of dollars per 
annum; but whose support has been recently esti- 
mated by the Commissioner of Agriculture at fifty 
million dollars per annum. Add the sheep which 
they destroy—two millions a year—their original 
cost, and the taxes levied upon them, and you raise 
the sum to about sixty millions. Sixty millions for 
dogs, six millions for ministers; and we Christians, 
and complain of our expenses! 

From things useless to things injurious. The 
recent convention of distillers, representing a capital 
of a hundred millions of dollars, acknowledge a pro- 
duction, last year, of one hundred and seventeen 
millions of gallons, and estimate its value at five 


hundred millions of dollars. This does not include 
17 


188 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


malt liquors. The sales of liquor, by retail, in the 


United States, in a single year, have been estimated, — 


from sworn returns, by the Special Commissioner of 
the Revenue, at $1,483,491,865, or over forty dollars 
for each man, woman, and child in the country— 
more, perhaps, than has been given for the clergy 
of the United States since the landing of the Pil- 
grims. One hundred and eighteen thousand six 
hundred and sixty-seven persons in the traffic, and 
twelve thousand wholesale, with their families—six 
hundred and fifty thousand persons—sales probably 
average, annually, five thousand for each retailer, 
giving $600,0C0,000. - 

From the support of the clergy, go to missionary 
contributions. We may set down seven millions as 
the sum contributed by all Protestant Christendom, 
annually, for missions. Our national debt would, at 
six per cent, support all Christian missions, on ten 
times their present scale, forever. The military estab- 
lishments of Europe, in this time of profound peace, 
consist—according to a French statistician—of seven 
and a half millions of men, at a cost of $1,312,- 
500,000; seven millions for the Prince of peace, 
thirteen hundred and twelve millions for the fist of 
wickedness, to say nothing of the withdrawal of 
seven and a half millions of men from productive 
labor ! | 

III. The expenses of our religion are small com- 
pared with that of other religions. Be it observed 
that man must have some religion. That fine remark 
of Plutarch, “There may be a city without founda- 
tions, rather than a State can maintain itself without 


- 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 189 


;- belief in gods,” is as true in our day as it was in 
his;. for, although, in modern times, communities 
have been organized on atheistic foundations, they 

- have soon become disorganized. It is impossible 

even to find an individual wholly devoid of religious 

principle or sentiment. Every man must invest 
something with those attributes of the Divinity 
which are displayed in the universe. Being exists, 
and must have a cause, and to whatever cause man 
ascribes it, he must, in certain crises of his life, pay 
the homage and fear and offering which constitute 
the essential principle of worship. Every form of 
worship is attended with expense. How great that 
of ancient paganism! Behold the ruins “of Egyp- 
tian temples, with their courts, obelisks, sculptures, 
statues, colonnades, porticoes, esplanades, and ave- 
nues of sphinxes! See the rock-temples of the 
Deccan! Tombs, too, in many heathen lands, either 
from some positive or negative element in their re- 
ligious faith, are very costly—the pyramids, for ex- 
ample, one of which is supposed to have employed 
one hundred thousand men for twenty years. In 
heathendom, monasteries are numerous; pundits and 
priests abound; mendicant monks swarm both cities 
and rural districts; worshipers make offerings at the 

_- Shrines in proportion to their wealth, pay fees to the 

: _ priests on every important occasion of life, and offer 

3 special sacrifices on the festival days with which their 

: sacfed calendar abounds. The offerings in, Calcutta 

at a Doorga Pooja, would, probably, support the 

Christian religion a year in one of our states. 

And what shall we say of pilgrimages to sacred 


190. = EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


shrines, such as Hurdwar, visited annually by a mill- 
ion or more; and of Melas, on the Ganges, where 
men are counted by hundreds of thousands, and even 
millions ? 

Nor are the expenses of Mohammedism much 
less. Mosques are often of imperial grandeur; tombs 
around the ancient seats are the chief monuments ; 
that of Shah Jehan, for example, built of marble, in- 
laid with precious stones, is said to have cost fifteen 
million dollars, when wages were but five or six 
cents a day. Pilgrimages are costly. Every Spring 
the Red Sea around Jiddah swarms with ships, and 
the land about Mecca shakes under the tramp of 
caravans. We need not speak of the expense of 
voyages, which voyagers, in many instances, are sold 
for a time to pay; nor of the epidemics which break 
out among them, carrying off the neglected sufferers, 
whose bones whiten the homeward land-track or sink 
into the seaward, and which sometimes attend the 
survivors to desolate the world. Nor must we forget 
that Islamism has its priests and monasteries and 
paid-prayers, at the tomb, and numerous Moulvies, 
like the scribes of the ancient Jews. 

The complex forms of the Catholic Church, if 
less costly than Mohammedism, are more so than 
Protestantism. Witness the cathedrals, “with long- 
drawn aisles and fretted roof!” St. Peter’s is large 
enough to take in eight or ten of our city churches, 
steeples and all. To say nothing of the gold on its or- 
naments, or of its statues, tombs, mosaics, medallions 
and effigies of saints and angels, the estimated cost 
of the building prior to the settlement of America, 


‘ 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. IgI 


was $47,900,000; its present value is said to be 
$225,000,000—more than all the Church property in 
the Union is worth. In many countries, where 
Christianity is established by law, the revenues of 
the higher clergy are princely, and the exactions of 
the Church for dowries, masses, patrimonies, bap- 
tisms, confirmations, burials, preaching, tithes, Easter 
blessings, miracles, triduos, and benedictions, are very 
great. In Mexico, for example, in 1850, when the 
population was seven millions, the annual rents of 
the clergy were estimated at from eighteen to twenty 
million dollars. 5 

As we go from the Protestantism of the United 
States—the purest and the cheapest—to that of 
Europe, thence to Romanism, thence to Mohammed- 
ism, finally to paganism—considering the resources 
of the people—we shall find religious expenses rel- 
atively, and, I think, also, absolutely, rapidly en- 
larging. 

Change, if you will, the worship of Christ for that 
of Mary; the Bible for the Koran; the Hebrew 
Jehovah for the gods of the Himmalayas; the Ser- 
mon on the Mount for the precepts of Confucius ; 
the civilization of the East for that of the West; but 
you shall pay for it roundly in dollars and cents. 

IV. The expenses of religion are small compared 
with its advantages. 

1. We will speak, first, of the material advantages. 

a. It increases property. That industry, fore- 
thought, and honesty promote prosperity; that with- 
out strong motives to cultivate these virtues, they will 
not be cultivated, since men are naturally prone to 


192 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


their opposites ; that their culture is enforced through 
the Christian Scripture by the strongest fosszble 
motives,—are propositions too patent to need to be 
proved. The economical, as well as the zmpelling, 
influences of the Christian faith subserve our tem- 
poral interests; for it is not what nations earn, but 
what they save, which enriches them. Christianity 
forbids prodigality, lust, intemperance, and every 
other form of wasteful expenditure, and proclaims 
principles which, if adopted by the nations, would 
prevent war, that greatest drain upon national re- 
sources. That it has promoted prosperity, as far as 
it has been received, will not be questioned. No 
nations ever accumulated wealth as Christian nations 
do. Three Christian powers have each a revenue of 
a million dollars a day. Nor is this surprising when 
we consider that the machinery of Great Britain does 
the work of four hundred million men. Wherever a 
church is erected, if it be of reasonable cost, it adds 
to the value of the surrounding property far more than 
it costs. 

Should the emigrant, reining up his horse in a 
village, while he saw grog-shops and bowling-alleys,’ 
see no place of worship, he would say, “ There will 
be drinking, swearing, fighting, murder, here ;’ and he 
would put spurs to his horse. Suppose, in the next 
village, he see the temple, with its spire rising above 
the business streets, and the well-dressed, happy peo- 
ple on their way to Zion, will he not say, “ There 
will be praying, singing, order, peace, here; other 
things being favorable, let us look out for a town-lot?” 
Turn your churches into pork-houses, and resolve that 


- 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. esse o'r) 


you will no longer endure the expense of religion, 
would you lose or gain? Every religious family—ay, 
and every decent family, which, though not religious, 
desires to rear its children under Christian influ- 
ences—would move out, and no man, who had any re- 
spect for God or religion, would move in; then put up 
_ your property at auction, and see what it would bring, 
while men pointing to your place on the map were 
saying, “Here is a doomed city of God’s dominions.” 
The personal and real estate of Illinois is probably 
$1,000,000,000. Once the whole state could have 
‘been purchased for a few thousand dollars and two 
beaver-skins a year, as Pennsylvania, less than two 
hundred years ago, was. Strike the difference, and 
set it down to the credit of Christian civilization. 
Do you doubt? Turn the Christians out and the 
Indians in, and you would prove the problem. What 
Christianity has done for us it can do for others ; 
and on this ground our contributions to missions are 
retnunerative. There stands Africa. Were it sunk 
beneath the ocean, it would scarce be missed, ex- 
cept by the sailor, as he crosses the seas. Let the 
Christian plowshare be thrust into it from Cape 
Agulhas to Cape Bon; and what treasures would 
flow down the Nile, the Niger, the Orange, the Zam- 
bese, and into the bosom of the civilizing countries ! 

b. Christianity gives security to property. Have 
you Government bonds? What renders them of 
value? In times of pecuniary distress, such as we 
may see, and times of intense party prejudice, such 
as we now see, what can prevent repudiation? Laws, 
_ constitutions, courts? Who made them? Can not 


194 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


the power, that created destroy? And what shall 
prevent the omnipotent people, after having absolved 
the principal debtor, from decreeing, also, that, ad? 
debtors shall be free from their obligations to.cred- 
itors? Such things have been done, both in ancient 
and modern republics, and if they are not here, it 
will be because of the conservative power of the 
Christain faith. In an absolute authority the en- 
lightened conscience is the only permanent check to 
human selfishness, and the security which it brings 
is the foundation of our greatness. 

The Barbary States, the valley of the Nile, and 
the region between the Black Sea and the Persian 
Gulf, in point of climate and soil, the finest in the 
earth—the seats of the great empires of antiquity— 
are, to a great degree, desolated, because the rapacity 
of rulers has rendered property insecure. 

c. Christianity secures the protection of person, as 
well as of property. In England the proportion of 
murders to the whole population is one in 675,000; 
in Holland, one in 163,000; in the North German 
Bund, one in 100,000; in Austria, one in 77,000; in 
Spain, one in 4,000; in the Papal States, one in 750, 
If we had the statistics of heathendom, the proba- 
bility is that the proportion would be greater than 
the last. What significant figures ! 

2. From the material let us pass to the intellectual 
benefits of the Church. 

Christianity is the great educator. It presents the 
grandest truths, and calls forth the highest capacities, 
When the human mind, having exhausted itself, had 
given up in despair, the Christian faith gave it a new 


—_ 
halle 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 195 


world of thought, and roused it to new action and 
immortal hope: While outside the Church it called 
forth a new philosophy, which sought to explain the 
system of the universe on the Christian idea of a 
Mediator, inside it set in the moral firmament that 
galaxy led on by Justin Martyr, Origen, and Augus- 
tine. From the throes of the ten persecutions it 
came forth strong enough to seize the empire of law 
as well as thought. 

When Rome was overwhelmed by barbarism it 
turned the rude invaders into civilized nations, and 
set them on the race of progress. In the dark ages, 
it established the cathedral schools and kept the 
Gres of literature burning beside the fires of the 
altar; it originated the great European universities. 
When need so required, it nourished up and sent 
forth Wickliffe and Luther, and Calvin and Wesley, 
proving its power to throw off the dominion of 
superstition and the accumulated errors and corrup- 
tions of centuries; quickening all Europe, leading 
mankind to wider fields of thought and more ener- 
getic action than the world had ever before known ; 
securing the rights of conscience, and raising an orb 
of light over the New World, which a Christian navi- 
gator had discovered. When assailed by Hobbes and 
his followers, it called forth Butler and _ his host to 
a triumphant battle for the truth. When denounced 
by Voltaire and the atheists, it sent forth champions 
to rout these antagonists, and plant the doctrine 
of the Nazarene deeper than ever in the mind of 
France. When attacked by the rationalists, it sent 
forth the school of Neander, armed with unsurpassed 


196 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


critical skill, to rear around its towers the impregnable 
bulwarks of history. It founded the free schools and 
colleges both of Europe and America, and it fur- 
nishes generally from the ranks of the clergy those 
patient masters of both who sit at the fountains of 
knowledge, and, by their ill-paid and exhaustive toil, 
direct and purify the streams that float the wealth 
and glory of the nation. It planted and it sus- 
tains the Sabbath-school. Every-where it gives, with 
Sinai’s theology and Calvary’s Cross, Greek culture 
and Roman strength. It produced Bacon, who 
opened the gates of modern science; and Dalton, - 
who dislosed the affinities and weights of atomic 
worlds; and Galileo and Kepler and Newton, those 
angels of light flying through the heavens, measur- 
ing the spaces and weighing the worlds on high. 

Its whole history, with all its heresies and counsels 
and scholasticism and crusades and sects, marks one 
grand, incessant, progressive intellectual movement, 
While the great empires of antiquity arose but to 
decay, modern states, by the force of Christian truth, 
have not only been set on the track of progress, but 
kept moving, until their wheels are all aflame. 

On these shores more than any other, it has been 
potential. Our nation took its rise from moral causes, 
received its first colonies from religious impulse, and 
its first government from men who had _ learned 
political liberty and the right of private judgment 
from the Bible. Here, Christianity produced Mahew 
and Langdon, and Dwight and Witherspoon, men 
who, sifting every principle, both of polity and ethics, 
enabled our fathers to rear and fortify the edifice of 


* 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 197 


our liberties. In later days, it raised up Asbury and 
Mason and Wayland, and the bright hosts they led. 
And now, one hundred and eleven thousand dis- 
courses every week, composed with a logical skill 
and rhetorical beauty not surpassed, if equaled, in 
congress or forum or field, and addressed to millions 
of the best hearers, constitute a course of highest 
education for the nation. Their themes are the 
most grand and stimulating that can engage the 
human mind; truths, the glimpses of which strained 
the eyes and woke the harp of ancient prophets— 
truths which echoed obscurely through the porch, 
the lyceum, the academy, when the sons of philoso- 
phy gathered from all the earth to the feet of Aris- 
totle and Plato; God, his attributes and relations ; 
man, his origin, duties, and destiny ; eternity, and its 
relations to time,—themes that will retain their inter- 
est through the centuries, the millenniums, the zons, 
in eternity. These themes are discussed in the clear 
light of revelation, illustrated by reference to all his- 
tory and science, and applied to the wants and con- 
ditions of men and the course of events. Under 
such tuition, which makes the whole nation an 
Athens, no wonder that men without collegiate drill 
can step from the plow to the Presidency, able to 
guide the State with all the wisdom and dignity of 
one born to a crown, and that the nation through 
all its trials grandly shapes its destiny. As Dr. 
Stiles well said, “Jefferson did but pour the soul 
of the nation into the monumental act of independ- 
ence;” and, we may add, Lincoln, at a later day, 
did but pour the soul of the same nation into the 


~ 


198 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


monumental act of universal liberty; and that soul 
was inspired by the Gospel. How could the country 
have gone through the Revolution without it? Who 
does not know that our institutions, our legislation, 
our national life, have been shaped by its principles 
and modified by its bearings? The reverberations 
of the greatest conflict ever known and the greatest 
victory ever achieved, show that it has not lost its 
power. 

3. Finally, consider the moral benefit of the 
Gospel. 

How great its restraining power? The marriage 
bond, the sacred Sabbath, the Church service, the 
solemn burial, and the humanizing and purifying in- 
fluences which the Gospel imparts to all literature 
and to domestic and social life, constitute such a 
check to men, that even an infidel, pressed on all 
sides by it, may lead an upright life. What if these 
restraints were withdrawn! 

We see, on a small scale, in the biography of 
Franklin. In early life he became a deist, and con- 
verted others to infidelity, among them Collins and 
Ralph. He formed acquaintance with Keith, an- 
other deist. Collins became the plague of his life, 
a drunkard, a brawler, a villain, who undertook in a 
fit of anger to drown his benefactor in the Delaware. 
Ralph deserted his innocent wife, went to England, 
ruined another woman, on whose earnings he lived in 
idleness for years. Keith deceived Franklin, and was 
called the greatest liar in Pennsylvania. Franklin 
himself committed deeds which filled him with re- 
morse. He became satisfied that the soul can not 


on 


———— 


x 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 199 


live on negations, nor society be preserved without 
positive religious truth, and that religion is a necessary 
part of the business of humanity. Follow those ad- 
venturers who, in 1848 and 1850, went hence to Cali- 
fornia. As they gathered round the mines, they could 
leave tools, gold-dust, clothing, in cabin or claim, with- 
out doors or fastening ; for they felt the power they had 
borne with them from the altar of the family and the 
Church. But soon, these institutions being absent, 
their power died out ; then crime came, like an epi- 
demic, and vice held carnival in town and city. An 
eye-witness says, “No profound impression of life as 
it then was, can possibly be made by language.” The 
restraint having been taken from the heart, out came 
murders, fornications, etc. But haunts of drunkards, 
saloons of gamblers, and houses on the way to hell, 
were too horrible, and the recollections of Zion and of 
Christian homes and purified affections, made men cry 
out for the religion of their childhood. Washington 
cautioned his countrymen against a fa/a/ error, when 
he asserted that national morality can not be main- 
tained in exclusion of religious principle. Pope has 
cast this truth in poetic form: 


“ Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, 
And, unawares, morality expires. 
Nor public flame nor private dares to shine, 
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine ; 
So thy dread empire, Chaos, is restored, 
Light dies before thy uncreating word : 
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall, 
And universal darkness covers all.” 


Contrast with the Christian faith the power of 
other religions to restrain. Stop not at the savage 


A 


200 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


tribes of Africa. Hurry on to Asia, ancient seat of 
knowledge, where Brahmanism prevails, infanticide 


is prevalent, theft organized, and falsehood well-nigh- 


universal ; there, though polygamy is allowed, few are 
found who have not violated the seventh command- 
ment; woman is not educated, because there is no 
literature in the language fit for her to read ; children 
converse in the streets in words which could not be 
translated here without mantling the cheek and pro- 
voking the hisses of the hearer, and sealing in shame 
the silence of the speaker; and there, too, are forms of 
sin which Christian tongue can not describe to Chris- 
tian ear. Mohammedism, with its better faith; Bud- 
dhism, with its floral decorations ; Confucianism, with 
its purer moral code,—have a practice scarce better. 
And how has it been in countries professedly 
Christian, but where the truth was corrupted, and re- 
ligion degenerated into a semi-paganism? At the 
period of the French Revolution, the Palais Royal 
was a lazar of vice. Gambling and prostitution col- 
lected there a luxurious youth, who had all the cor- 


ruption of the ancient regime without the redeeming” 


trait of that elegance which imposes a sort of out- 
ward restraint. What was graver, the institution of 
the family was seriously undermined, thanks to the 
unheard of facility of divorce, and the almost equal 
footing of natural and legitimate children. There was 
one divorce to eleven marriages, and the bonds which 
were so easily dissolved were little respected where 
they did exist. The Eclair, a journal of the time, 
said: “ We are the only people in the world that ever 
attempted to do without religion. But what is our 


ADVANTAGES OF THE-GOSPEL. 201 


sad experience? Every tenth day we are ‘astounded 
by the recital of more crimes and assassinations than 
were committed formerly in a whole year. At the 
risk of speaking an obsolete language and of recciy- 
ing insult for response, we declare that we must cease 
striving to destroy the remnants of religion if we de- 
sire to prevent the entire. dissolution of society.” 
Christ’s empire embraces the world. He says to 
one hemisphere, “Give up,” and to another, “ Keep 
not back.” Welcome the North, with its Esquimaux 
and its ice; welcome the South, with its negroes and 
its cotton; welcome the East, with its Caucasians and 
its ships ; welcome the West, with its Indians and its 
lumber; welcome Asia, with its spices and poetry ; 
welcome Africa, with its gems and love; and Europe, 
with its arts and laws; and Columbia, with its corn 
and conquering energies,—welcome all, to the com- 
mon table and common temple of the Lord. Christ's 
regenerating principle unifies the race. AAs the living 
principle of the body takes up food and water, and air 
and earth, and iron and phosphorus, and molds them 
into a perfect being, so the vital principle of Chris- 
tianity takes up Jew and Greek, Barbarian, Scythian, 
bond and free, white and black, and molds them into 
a grand and glorious organism—the faultless, spotless 
bride, the Lamb’s wife, all whose parts “fitly joined 
together, and compacted by that which every joint 
supplieth, according to the effectual working in the 
measure of every part, maketh increase of the body to 
the edifying of itself in love.” Christ's principles 
level all men up to the mountain heights, far above 
those partition-walls by which men have barred each 


202 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


other out, and, behind which they have shouted out 
Odi profanum vulgus. The great truths of a common 
nature, a common Father, a common fall, and a com- 
mon redemption, make the meanest, weakest, humblest 
heir of life; an inheritor of all the precious promises 
and memories and hopes of the race, and link him 
by indissoluble ties to all the redeemed in earth and 
heaven. | 

But beyond all this, mark its saving power. It 
shows the heart as nothing else does. Goethe re- 
marks that “the Gospel well is not the only one 
wherein the stars can glass themselves.” That may 
be; but it is the only true mirror of the heart. Other 
books conceal, in part, its deformity ; the Gospel shows 
man’s natural image as it is. Other books treat man’s 
disease superficially, the Gospel radically. It has 
power to heal. Neither philosophy nor false religions 
can cure the convicted soul. Go to it as it is, pene- 
trated with a sense of Divine holiness and justice, 
bowed under a conscious alienation from God, failure 
in duty, and danger of death, struggling for forgive- 
ness, righteousness, and rest; talk of the beauties of 
nature, the green of earth, the freshness of ocean, of 
the pleasures of friendship, and the charms of home, of 
music and statuary, and oratory, of men singers and 
women singers—all the delights of the sons of men. 
Alas! he has tried them and found them all vanity. 

Send him to mathematics or metaphysics, or bid 
him drown his cares in business, or in the field of 
battle; but when the mind reverts to God and judg- 
_ ment, will not the horror return? Tell him of Divine 
goodness. This does but aggravate his guilt; for that 


ie a oo 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 203 


very goodness will bind God to enforce his law, and 
save his universe. Present him with idols, and how 
will he spurn them! with sacrifices, and how will he 
ask, Can rivers of blood or oil atone? with transmigra- 
tion and purgatory, and how will he revolt! Talk of 
philosophy, transcendental or what not—he may go 
through it all, crying: 
“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 

Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 

And with some sweet oblivious antidote 

Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff, 

That weighs upon the heart?” 

Point him to Jesus, God with us, reconciling the 
world unto himself. This is all he needs. He sees 
the storm of Divine justice sweep over that Cross, 
leaving him a saved and grateful suppliant, while his 
Savior ascends from the grave to the mediatorial 
throne, to raise him, in the Divine image through 
heaven’s gate, to the realms of eternal life. Is he lost? 
Christ came to seek the lost. Is he a great sinner? 
Christ is a great Savior. Fear is cast out by love, im- 
patience by faith, and sorrow by hope, and he sings: 

“Lord of heaven and earth, my breast 
Seeks in thee its only rest ; 
I was lost, thy accents mild 
Homeward turned thy wandering child ; 
I was blind, thy healing ray 
Chased the long eclipse away : 


Source of every joy I know, * 
Solace of my every woe.” _ 


Mark its transforming power. Not more won- 
derful the change which passed over Peter, when 


Moses and Elias talked with Jesus on the mount, 
18 


204 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


amid the blaze of the transfiguration, than when the 
cowardly and blaspheming spectator in Pilate’s hall 
became the bold preacher, leading three thousand 
Jews to baptism at the Pentecost. Nor has the 
Gospel lost its power. It comes, now soft as the 
snow-flake, now terrible as the avalanche; now like 
dew watering the plain, now like the flood sending 
torrents to the sea. Often, as in an instant, the vile 
is made pure, the revengeful merciful, the profane 
holy, the despairing hopeful, the abode of conflict 
and misery a home of harmony and joy, and the 
pillow of darkness is lighted up with glory. Your 
own observation will supply you with cases; I give 
one or two from my own. 

Hark, in the love-feast, one says: “You knew me 
of old, and you know that no man insulted me but 
I drew his blood, and delighted to do it; but, since 
I have known Jesus, a little child may lead me.” 

Who are these stalwart men weeping together at 
the altar? ‘They have been bitter enemies, and one 
has prosecuted the other for an assault with intent 
to kill, and I anr his lawyer, but my law-suit is all 
spoiled.” And so it was, for when they embraced 
Christ they embraced each other. 

Look at that man, a graduate of Yale, a de- 
scendant of Jonathan Edwards, an eminent lawyer, 
yet sunk so low that he is taken from the gutter 
night after night by the boys, and when his daughter 
dies, he has not wherewith to buy her shroud. He 
goes to the altar of prayer. Men say it is no use. 
Even Christians rejoice with trembling. But he 
calls on Jesus wot in vain. You have seen the 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 205 


crysalis burst its case, and soar in air, and bathe in 
sunlight, one of the prettiest and happiest things in 
a world of flowers and song. So with this man. 
He becomes a model of purity and propriety, and, 
after having preached the Gospel many years, he 
leaves this world with a joyful evidence that he 
is passing to a better. Go to the family where 
darkness and suspicion and jealousy and disorder 
reign, and if they will but receive Christ, mark how 
light and confidence and order and peace spring up. 
Go to the regions of superstition and idolatry, and 
see what transformations are effected by Jesus. 

Look at that island of cannibals. How will you 
civilize them? One says, “Send a farmer, with plows 
and harrows and axes;’ another, “Send a school- 
master, with maps and black-boards and _ blow-pipes, 
to teach them letters ;’ another, “Send them a phi- 
losopher, to teach them about the me and the zo¢ 
me, and limitation.” Alas! they dare not land, lest 
they be ciubbed and eaten. Send a park of artillery 
there to defend them. The people would hardly 
hold still long enough to understand what they 
meant. Well, the preacher lands with nothing but 
the language and the Gospel. He is not clubbed 
and eaten. He preaches; he builds; he plants 
his church, around which the gardens bloom ; and, 
when he dies, he is not roasted and eaten, but laid 
java grave, which is planted with roses, and watered 
each Sabbath day with the tears of savages con- 
verted to God by this ministry of Jesus. 

Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard 
his spots? No, but God can, He makes the swine 


206 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


a swan, the tiger a lamb. These changes come by 
no process which philosophy can trace; as a rainbow 
in the night, a river in the desert, as life leaping from 
the corpse. 

Lay the map of the world before you ; shade off 
its parts according to their light, and you shall find 
that where it is the brightest, the Christian faith is 
most fully enjoyed; where it is the darkest, it is 
unknown ; and that the intermediate parts are bright 
or dark in proportion as the Christian religion is 
received, Franklin wished to introduce the use of 
plaster in agriculture; but the farmers were some 
afraid to try it, some prejudiced against it. Frank- 
lin wrote with plaster on a meadow by the roadside, 
in large letters, “This has been plastered.” The 
white letters soon disappeared, and’ were replaced 
by letters in emerald, rising in brilliant contrast to 
the rest of the meadow; so that, as the travelers 
passed and repassed, they could read all Summer, 
in characters of living green, “This has been plas- 
tered.” And so we may read through the ages, on 
the surface of society wherever the Christian religion 
‘is known, “This has been plastered.” 

Mark its unifying power. All other religions are 
local and partial, and tend to separate races and 
nations. Christianity teaches that the diversities of 
gifts were designed, not as lines of separation, but 
bonds of union, making each nation, each race, the 
complement of every other, and binding all together 
in a community of interests and obligations. It is 
the glory of strength to defend weakness, and of 
weakness to put itself under the care of strength; it 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 207 


is the glory of knowledge to inform ignorance, as it 
is the joy of ignorance to sit at the feet of knowl- 
edge; it is the duty of the reasoning intellect to 
restrain the imaginative, and of the imaginative to 
lead on the reasoning; and the duty of the loving 
heart and active hand to actualize what the sancti- 
fied reason demonstrates and the sanctified fancy 
portrays as possible; thus making all the world 
illustrate the parable of the Good Samaritan. As 
the different rays of the prism blend in a perfect 
light, so in the millennial day, the different races 
will blend in a perfect world. 

How immensely has the mind of the world in 
Christian countries been enlarged and invigorated— 
how has its knowledge been increased and extended! 
It has more than doubled within a century. What 
‘regions of space have been opened above by the 
telescope, beneath by the microscope! what new sci- 
ences have been constructed, what new and im- 
proved methods, what invention, what arts, enlarging 
the powers of man and his dominion over matter! 

Has not the heart, also, been improved? Philan- 
thropy is breaking down the prejudices which barred 
men from each other, going over all bounds in search 
of men to do them good—feeding the poor, reforming 
the drunkard, healing the sick, reforming the crim- 
inal, freeing the slave, opening the eyes of the 
blind, and making the lame man leap as a hart, 
and the tongue of the dumb sing, soothing the de- 
ranged, and teaching the idiot. Nor has the con- 
science been uncultured. What regard for human 
rights, for constitutional liberty, for national honor, 


208 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


reforming codes, enlarging suffrage, promoting friendly 
intercourse among nations! Justice, like an angel, 
flies through the earth, shaking down tyrannies, 
alarming tyrants, uplifting humanity. Where did 
all this impulse come from, if not from Jesus of 
Nazareth ? 

But why has not the Gospel done more? It 
must not be expected to operate where it is not ap- 
plied. Salt is not a failure because meat, which is 
not salted, putrefies. The Gospel professes to make 
men holy in proportion as it is adopted. Does it 
not accomplish all that it promises. Why has it not 
filled the world with saints? So it would, if God 
did not take the saints out of the world. If you 
would see what it has done, you must look not only 
on earth, but beyond. You must climb up and look 
over into glory, and count that bright host that have 
washed their robes and made them white in the 
blood of the Lamb. You must penetrate the hearts 
of men, and see what resistance it has overcome, and 
what moral seed it has sown, to produce the harvests 
which better ages are to reap. You must go down 
to the regions of the lost, and see from the history 
of their inhabitants what it would have done had it 
not left the human will inviolate. You must bear 
in mind, too, that, as every man is born a sinner, if 
the Church could finish her work to-day, she must 
begin it again to-morrow. 

Some thoughtless souls say, The world is worse 
rather than better for Christianity. If any man really 
believe this, let him pack up at once, and go out of 
Christendom into heathendom. Let him exchange 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 209 


his mansion for a hut; his broadcloth for a skin ; his 
feast of beef and oysters for the roast of a canni- 
bal; his clean, cultivated, Christian wife for the filthy 
squaw of a savage; and all the light, intellectual, 
moral, and scientific, that beams around him, for the 
darkness of Fiji. | 
} Have you a substitute for this Gospel? France 
thought she had, and tried Theophilanthropism, with 
its simple liturgy and emblematic mummeries; but 
soon the very consuls turned it with contempt out 
of the Churches it defiled. What have we to try? 
Two things only are proposed. Pantheism and 
spiritualism. The first, stripped of its disguises, is 
simply the religion of old Egypt, when, saying 
“Every thing is God,” she consistently worshiped 
every thing from the stars of heaven to the reptiles 
of earth. And spiritualism was tried ages ago, at 
Thebes, at Dodona, at Delphos, at Endor; it is still 
tried among the devil-worshipers of both the Eastern 
World and the Western. Strange that, after the 
experience of Pyrrhus and Saul, of Ceylonese and In- 
dians— 
“The voice and hideous hum 
Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving ; 
-Apollo from his shrine, 
Doth once more divine, 
With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving ; 
And nightly trance and breathed spell, 

Inspire the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell ”— 
in vain attempts to revive, by contemptible imita- 
tions, impositions which have been the lJaughing- 
stock of the intelligent world for ages. And this is 
Philosophy’s last. substitute for the Gospel! 


210 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


But men say: “We must have some substitute; 
for Christianity is a failure. In our chief city of 
Churches and Bibles, our newspapers are blackened 
with reports of domestic infidelities, disorders, and 
disgraces; of giant crimes undertaken or accom- 
plished.” But this is an imperfect view, in which 
the evil only is disclosed. 

Last Fall, when we had a succession of disasters, 
the New York Zrzbune said: “The telegraph-wires 
groan under the weight of woe; the old earth quivers 
with throbs of agony from the center to the Pole; 
cities are shaken down, countries are ingulfed, fair 
domains are overflown with red-hot lava; a hecatomb 
is sacrificed on one railway, and on still another the 
width of a hair stands between a thousand and sudden 
deaths.” And yet we know that millions travel un- 
hurt; that the telegraph throbs, or might throb, 
under the weight of joy ; that the earth rolls on her 
course as aforetime, amid fresh air and sunlight and 
happy myriads; that unnumbered cities stand fast, 
and immense countries remain uninjured above the 
seas; and that the damage done by the dsorder is 
as nothing to the blessings bestowed by the estab- 
lished order of the universe. So in moral spheres. 

Although, since man is a free moral agent, Chris- 
tianity does not overcome him, it does greatly zzfluence 
him. That banks are not robbed; that honest earn- 
ings are assured to laborers; that the capitalist is not 
overwhelmed by prodigal pursuers ; that, in this city, 
two hundred thousand people rise up and lie down 
daily with a sense of security ; that among them are 
thousands of faithful wives and honorable husbands ; 


ADVANTAGES OF THE GOSPEL. 211 


that all around are harmonious homes and sweet 
voiced charities, and broad philanthropies and free- 
schools, and self-denying laborers and happy scenes 
of worship and song, and glorious Christian death- 
beds, though they are not matters of record, should be 
of reflection, and none the less because they consti- 
tute the usual current of events. 

While Christianity is speaking in languages more 
numerous, by tongues more eloquent, in nations more 
populous than ever before; marshaling better troops, 
with richer harmony; shrinking from no foe, rising 
triumphant from every conflict; shaking down the 
owers of all philosophies that exalt themselves 
against God; making the steam-press rus under the 
demand for her Scriptures, and the steam-horse groax 
under the weight of her charities ; emancipating the 
enslaved, civilizing the lawless, refining literature, in- 
spiring poetry; sending forth art and science, no 
longer clad in soft raiment to linger in king’s pal- 
aces, but as hardy prophets of God to make earth 
bud and blossom as the rose; giving God-like 
breadth and freedom and energy to the civilization 
which bears its name, elevating savage islands into 
civilized states, leading forth Christian martyrs from 
the mountains of Madagascar, turning the clubs of 
cannibals into the railings of the altars before which 
Fiji savages call upon Jesus; repeating the Pente- 
cost, “by many an ancient river and many a palmy 
plain ;’ thundering at the seats of ancient paganism ; 
sailing all waters, cabling all oceans, scaling all 
mountains in the march of its might, and ever en- 
larging the diameter of those circles of light which 

19 


212 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION.” 


it has- kindled on earth, and which will soon meet 
in a universal illumination,—you call it a failure. A 
little more such failure, and we shall have, over all 
the globe, the new heavens and new earth wherein 
dwelleth righteousness! 


La: 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 


HE Gospel, as an authoritative exhibition of 

God’s grace and his dealings with mankind, is 
necessary for doctrine. It is the foundation of all 
truth, the source of all information, both with respect 
to what we are and how we may be saved. 

I. Christ clearly and fully reveals the only scheme 
of salvation ever devised by God. 

We sometimes speak carelessly of the different 
dispensations, as though they were different schemes ; 
whereas they are only different exhibitions of the 
same scheme, revealed in clearer and clearer light. 
God did not try one plan, and that failing, another, 
and, finally, the plan of the Cross. From eternity he 
has had but one plan. Back through the prophetic 
visions, back through the types and shadows of the 
law, even to the first promise of a deliverer, made in 
the Garden, we see the blood of sprinkling. Although 
in the developments of history, sin precedes and 
mercy follows, it is not so in the mind of God. 
While some Scriptures represent sin, by marring 
God’s work, as bringing him out of the order of his 
purposes, the general current of the Bible represents 
God as having foreseen and forecast for transgres- 


sion. Abraham comes before Moses, faith before law, 
213 


214 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


the pillar of cloud and fire before the thunders 
of Sinai. 

The offering of Isaac, the deliverance of Israel, the 
utterance of the Law, the subjugation of Canaan, the 
reign of Solomon, the transtation of Elijah, the songs 
of the prophets, were but indications and preparations 
for the Desire of all nations—that great Antitype who, 
laying aside the glory that he had with the Father 
before the world was, came to be the Prophet, Priest, 
and King of mankind. The risen Lord, on his way to 
Emmaus, “beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, 
expounded to them in a@// the Scriptures the things 
concerning himself.” 

Unbelievers sometimes talk of an older religion 
than the Christian, which they set up not as a rival, 
but a predecessor and encompasser of the Christian, 
that, with a patronizing air, they are willing to accept 
as a respectable modification thereof. But there is no 
older religion than the Christian—there caz be none. 
Open the Bible. “In the degtuning, God created.” 
Can you get behind that? Open the New Testa- 
ment. “In the degzuning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Pile 
up decades, centuries, millenniums, zons, you can not 
get behind the beginning. Sin and Christ do not 
even rise together, like the twin mountains, Ebal and 
Gerizim—blessing answering to curse, as peak to 
peak. Before man was formed, before the globe was 
launched, before the morning stars sang together for 
joy over a new creation, before the first angel tuned 
his harp, the scheme of God’s mercy was sketched, 
and the Lamb slain lay in the Infinite Mind, according 


i 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 215 


to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ 
Jesus. 

As there is no older religion, so there is none 
more universal than Christianity. “Go into all the 
world.” “Preach the Gospel to every creature.” 
“Whosoever believeth shall be saved.” ‘“ Whosoever 
will, let him come.” Nor is any more absolute con- 
ceivable. It has no relation to any particular tribe, 
nation, time, or place ; it is for man generically. 

II. Christ solves the moral and religious problems 
which have engaged the minds of men in all ages. 

1. One of these is ¢he existence of God. Men talk 
of a positive philosophy, which contents itself with 
phenomena, but the human mind awakened can not 


be restricted to results. It will rise to causes, and 


from the lower to the higher—from the seen to the un- 
seen. It will speculate, hypothecate, imagine ; it will 
pierce beyond the visible sphere; it will wait and watch 
along the current of results, for an invisible power 
to break through, or for an opportunity to break 
through to it. The heart, too, has its exploring ten- 
drils out. It can not bear to consider humanity the 
sport of chance in a fatherless world. Hence, in all 
nations and ages, men have had some conception of 
God. The human mind, however, left to itself, rarely, 
if ever, attains to a just knowledge of the Almighty. 
It is one thing to demonstrate the being of God, 
and another to assume it. The uneducated masses 
deify the great forces or objects of nature, and become 
polytheists and idolaters ; and so far from rising to 
higher and purer conceptions of God with the lapse 
of time, become more and more gvoss in both their 


216 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


theology and worship. As, in ancient times, philoso- 
phers, “professing themselves to be wise, became 
fools,” so, in modern times, the heathen, though they 
admit the existence of a supreme God, do not profess 
to know him or worship him, but pay all their devo- 
tions to the most contemptible idols. 

The educated, if they do not become atheists, 
either confound God and his works, and become pan- 
theists, or separate him from his works, contemplating 
him afar off, indifferent to his creatures. A large 
majority of the philosophic minds of the pagan world 
to-day are pantheists, as a great part of those of the 
ancient world were. This is not because of deficient 
intellect or cultivation or study; for it is remarkable 
that learned minds, under the full blaze of modern 
science, when they reject the Bible, also, generally, 
become pantheists. This is the prevailing form of 
rationalistic unbelief both in Europe and America. 

Some of the great minds of ancient philosophic 
Greece conceived of the Creator as an infinine Mind, 
which, having made the universe and impressed laws 
upon it, retired into the infinite distance, unobservant 
of its results. To them, God was a mere group of 
abstractions, a logical necessity, a revelation to the 
mere intellect. 

a: Jesus Christ gives to our conceptions of God, 
definiteness. Ideas of the eternal, the spiritual, the 
invisible, need a finite and visible frame-work,. in 
order to make clear and definite impressions upon be- 
ings of compound nature like ourselves. The ancient 
Jews were educated up to the idea of God by sym- 
bols and signs and miracles. The form of man, walk- 


7 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 217 


ing in the garden at the cool of the day ; the angel of 
the Lord, in the tent-door of the patriach ; the pillar 
of cloud and fire, marching before the hosts through 
the wilderness; the cherubim above the ark.y the 
voice of the prophet,—were necessary external mani- 
festations. Nor were these enough. Even Moses, 
the mediator, craved something more than the mount 
that shook and thundered and blazed, and God hid him 
in the cleft of the rock while his glory, so moderated 
that he could bear it, passed by, and an ‘audible voice 
proclaimed, “The Lord God, merciful and gracious.” 
Yet, with all these advantages, the Jewish conception 
of God was incomplete. It was that of embodied law, 
order, majesty, holiness—a revelation to the mind 
rather than the heart. We need something to bring 
God nearer to us. Humanity craves an incarnation, 
and, strange to say, in all ages it has believed in one. 
Christ satisfies this want, and gives to our notion of 
God the clearness and definiteness of a person. Not 
a set of abstractions on the one hand, nor the mere 
dynamics of nature on the other; but a Being of in- 
telligence, affection, and will; creating, governing, 
controlling the universe, yet separate from it. Christ 
is the visible image of the invisible God. “God, who 
at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in 
times past unto the Fathers, hath, in these last 
times, spoken unto us by his Son, who is the bright- 
ness sida his Father’s glory, the express image of his 
person.” 

Thus God teaches us, as we do our children. 
How would you convey to your child a correct idea 
of the air? Take him to an empty room, and ask 


~ 


218 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


him what he sees, he will say, “Nothing.” Take hito 
to the mountain-top, and ask him what there is be- 
tween him and the stars, he will answer, “Nothing.” 
He sees nothing, feels nothing. He-is sure~all is 
emptiness. How can you remove his incredulity? 
Take him to the laboratory. Let him see the chemist 
take some atmosphere in a receiver and analyze it; 
placing the oxygen in one jar, the nitrogen in another, 
the carbonic acid in a third, and experimenting with 
each. As the child beholds the iron wire burn in the 
oxygen, like tow in the flame, and the animal suffo- 
cated in the nitrogen, and the candle go out when the 
carbonic acid is poured, like invisible water, over the 
wick, he will come to understand not only that the 
air exists, but that it has properties on which all liv- 
ing nature depends. Let him see the chemist take 
another portion of amosphere, and, having thrust an 
animal into it, place it under an air-pump, and exhaust 
the air. As the child sees the animal swell and die 
and burst, he will feel that, notwithstanding he may 
not see the air, he lives and moves and has his being 
in it, that it keeps the blood in his veins, and the life 
in his body. | 

Christ, in a manner, incloses the Deity for us, so 
that we can approach him, and mark his power 
and wisdom and holiness, his heart of sympathy and 
love, his active benevolence and self-abnegation for 
the good of others. We have but to add zufinity 
to this image; and, wherever we go in the universe, 
we can conceive a loving heart on which we may 
pillow our weary head, and find an eternal refuge and 
rest. 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 219 


They take inadequate views of Christ’s prophetic 
character, who think Jesus came only to utter dis- 
courses, parables, and prayers. Suppose all he ever 
said be found in the writings of Jewish rabbis and 
heathen philosophers, his great function would still 
be an original one, zo show us the Father. Neither 
earth nor seas nor skies, much as they may show us 
of the attributes of God, could show us that. We 
might see through the handiwork to the architect ; 
and angels might see through the providence to the 
character of God, but not we. The great year of 
fable repeating itself, a chaos without order or hope 
of it, a revolution under the dynamics of blind fate, 
a course of history shaped by human passions, might 
be our idea of Providence. Did not our Lord show 
us, behind the curtain of the skies, the infinite Parent, 
crushing with his footfall the schemes of kings, 
molding with his hand the majestic mountains, 
watching with his eye the falling sparrow and the 
falling tear, and working all things after the counsel 
of a Father’s heart? Why are we burdened with sor- 
row? Why tread we, with bleeding feet, life’s thorny 
path? Jesus bore the same burden and trod the 
same path, to teach us that it is all in love. 

b. Christ reveals the Father zz his fullness ; that 
is, in modes which nature does not teach or rea- 
son discover, but which, when revealed, find their 
echoes in one and their arguments in the other. 
Such is the trinity in unity and the atonement; the 
last being a scheme which presents righteousness on 
the one hand and love on the other—Christ dying, the 
just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. 


220° EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


This scheme solves a problem which has _per- 
plexed the minds of men in all ages. Man has vio- 
lated God’s law—holy, just, and good—whose penalty 
the Ruler is bound to enforce. How shall the sin- 
ner be spared and the government be, at the same 
time, maintained? How shall the conflicting claims 
of justice and mercy be reconciled? Nature has no 
answer to this question; you may hold it under the 
light of every sun in vain. Providence has none. 
Consciousness has none; it can testify only to what 
is within us. Conscience none; it can only show 
us how much we fall short. 

The penalties of atural law, so far as we can 
trace them, are uniformly enforced. Repentance, 
though it may mztigate, does not avert them. Why 
shall not the moral laws be enforced in like manner? 
Some sacrifice must be offered, that the law may be 
vindicated and justice satisfied. The very labors of 
infidels to show that this is not necessary, prove a 
lurking suspicion in their breasts that it is. Man, 
admitted into heaven without this, would feel his 
conscience outraged, and would carry a cross with 
him through the realms of glory. But where shall 
such a sacrifice be found? Neither earth nor sea 
nor sky can answer. Vain to talk of rivers of oil, 
or the cattle upon a thousand hills; they all be- 
long to God. Nor can we’ offer the fruit of the 
body for the sin of the soul; this were murder. 
Nor the body itself; this were szdcide. Moreover, 
the victim must be uncorrupted. Christ solves the 
problem. He gave his lifea ransom. He has power 
to lay down his life and take it again. If he had not, 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 221 


his death would have been martyrdom, instead of 
sacrifice. He had power to endure the curse, satisfy 
justice, magnify the law, and bring the sinner within 
the range of mercy; to be the Daysman, laying one 
hand on the sinner, another on the throne; to be the 
faithful and sympathizing High-priest, who ever liveth 
to intercede for us. 

2. Another difficult problem is that of human 
history. Without the Gospel, how inexplicable !—a 
chaos without form or law; a rising and falling of 
nations without* connection, order, or end, as the 
waves of a shoreless sea! 

Christ comes teaching the unity, fall, and redemp- 
tion of the human race, and showing how, under the 
laws of justice and mercy, without interfering with 
human freedom, it advances to the appointed con- 
summation. 

Johann Muller, the Prussian historian, who, in the 
midst of his great historical studies, was converted 
to Christianity, gives an account of his change, to his 
friend Karl Bonnet, in these pregnant words: “ Since 
I have been at Cassel, I have been reading the an- 
cient authors in their chronological order, and making 
extracts from them where any remarkable facts struck 
me. I do not know why, two months ago, I took 
it into my head to read the New Testament before 
my studies had advanced to the age in which it was 
written. How shall I describe to you what I found 
therein! I had not read it for many years, and was 
prejudiced against it before I took it in hand. The 
light which struck Paul with blindness on his way to 
Damascus was not more strange, more surprising. to 


222 2 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


~ 


him, than it was to me, when I suddenly discovered 
the fulfillment of all hopes, the highest perfection of 
philosophy, the explanation of all revelations, the key 
to all the seeming contradictions of the physical and 
moral world. I beheld that which was the most 
wonderful effected by the most insignificant means, 
' I perceived the references of all the revolutions of 
Europe and Asia to that miserable nation in which 
the promises were deposited, just as important papers 
are intrusted to one who can neither read nor adul- 
terate them. I saw the religion appear at the mo- 
ment most favorable for its appearance, and in the 
manner most adapted to secure its acceptance. The 
whole world seemed to be ordered for the sole pur- 
pose of furthering the religion of the Redeemer ; and, 
if this religion is not divine, I understand nothing at 
all. I have read no book on the subject; but hitherto, 
in all my study of the ancient times, I have always 


felt the want of something ; and it was not till I knew ~ 


oO? 


our Lord, that all was clear to me. With him there 
is nothing that I am not able to solve.” 

-The great Napoleon, on his death-bed, expressed 
the same view. He said: “If once the divine char- 
acter of Christ is admitted, Christian doctrine ex- 
_ hibits the clearness and precision of algebra, so that 
we are struck with its scientific connection and ‘unity. 
The nature of Christ is, I grant it, from one end to 
another, a web of mysteries ; but this mysteriousness 
does not correspond to the difficulties which all ex- 
istence contains. Let it be rejected, and the whole 
world is an enigma ; let it be accepted, and we possess 
a wonderful explanation of the history of man.” As 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 223 


Leutard says, “He is the one man toward whom the 
whole history of the human race was tending, in 
which it found its unity, and in whom history finds 
its turning-point, as the close of the old and the 
commencement of the new era. The whole course 
of external events and the progress of the human 
mind were tending toward him; the result of both 
was to demand, without being able to produce him. 
Hence, in him both find their completion.” 

3. Another problem over which humanity has pon- 
dered and prayed, is this: How into the universe of 
a Being of infinite wisdom and goodness, sez can 
enter. If we ascribe moral evil to God, we are pan- 
theists; if we exalt it to an independent entity and 
a rivalship with God in the government of the uni- 
verse, we are dualists; if we ascribe it to chance, 
we are fatalists; and in this triangle has the think- 
ing mind of the world, when without revelation, moved, 
Although there are shadows on this subject which 
perhaps can not be removed from our minds in our 
present state, yet Christ frees it from distressing 
difficulties, showing that God is holy, man free, and 
that man’s elevation involved the liability to fall. 
Bishop Butler shows how a being made upright 
might fall, as how one placed on a straight path, 
with numerous objects to divert his attention, might 
deviate from it, and once having left it, deviate more 
and more, unless some external force replaced him. 

But why should he be subjected to the hazard ? 
| The Christian, on his mount of vision, sees God. 
rising out of eternity, sole ruler of the universe, per- 
mitting sin, but restraining, chastising, overcoming it, 


224 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


while far through the dim portals of the past he starts 
the Messenger of mercy and redemption. 

4. Another great problem is the vale of life. 

Every man has a sense of right and wrong, and, 
in ordinary cases, natural conscience is correct in its 
judgments; yet, beyond the primary principles, un- 
less it be enlightened, it is sure to err. Besides 
moral integrity, a judge must have a knowledge both 
of the law and the facts, or his decision may be 
erroneous. Many excellent precepts are found in 
heathen writings, but they are always mingled with 
error; and every heathen system of morals is either 
defective, erroneous, or redundant. Christ’s is neither. 
Although it is perfect, it does not undertake to regu- 
late all human duty by specific precepts. This were 
impossible. We can not enumerate all the relations 
between man and man; language is not a sufficiently 
accurate instrument of thought. Mohammed laid 
down seventy thousand precepts; but had he laid 
down seventy times that number, his system would 
have been imperfect. Christ supplies us with gen- 
eral principles, which an enlightened conscience can 
apply to all the duties of life. His golden rule is to 
moral dimensions what a two-foot rule is to material. 
By applying it, we can measure our duty to our 
fellow-men, with both ease and accuracy, in every 
case. The precept is original with him, for, though 
in heathen and rabbinical writings precepts resem- 
bling it can be found, they are merely negative. If 
it could be found to have existed in all its perfection 
before Christ, the position which he gives it would 
entitle him to the merit of originality. 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 225 


The law of love which He lays down as the sum 
of the Decalogue, is a more complete summary of 
human duty, since it regulates our relations both to 
God and man, world without end, and stands in 
morals as a- discovery like that of Newton’s in phi- 
losophy; the one showing the law of moral order 
and harmony as the other does of material; the 
former commending itself to the enlightened uni- 
versal conscience as the latter to the enlightened 
universal reason. 

Mark the perfection of the Savior’s morality: 
“Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is _per- 
fect.” Transparent purity, not only of lip and life, 
but of thought and feeling; love with all the heart 
for God; love as for ourselves, for man. Not a mere 
passive benevolence, but an active one, that can not 
rest while there is a pain to be alleviated, a sorrow 
to be assuaged, a sin to be pardoned, or a soul to be 
saved ; a comprehensive benevolence, that, while it 
cares for the body, overlooks not the soul, and in its 
concern for time, loses not its interest in eternity; a 
wise benevolence, which develops and purifies men 
from within, and rises from individuals to masses, 
since the world must be developed from its one, 


“Tf bettered in its many ;” 


a God-like beneficence, which sheds its blessings as 
the sun his light, both on the just and unjust. 
Where is there morality like this? Do you say, 
In natural conscience? But the Arab, tracking the 
caravan through the desert, to mingle with the sand 
the blood of the unoffending; the cannibal Fijian, 


226 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


clubbing the innocent stranger, to roast him for his 
evening meal,—has natural conscience. Do you say, 
Give natural conscience a refined education? The 
highest education was enjoyed by the Grecian and 
Roman sages; and Plato and Socrates, Cicero and 
Seneca, focalize their best light on morals; but who, 
that has read their works, does not know how far 
they fall beneath the Gospel standard? Plato ap- 
proves drunkenness, licentiousness, and infanticide; 
Socrates doubts concerning a future life; Cicero 
allows divorce for trivial causes; and Seneca both 
justifies and commits suicide. Even at the present 
day, moralists who discard the Bible and rely on 
reason for the rule of life, disagree, although the 
world has had millenniums of study, and now enjoys 
the boasted blaze of modern science. Even in funda- 
mentals they are wide apart—some contending that 
utility, or the greatest happiness of the greatest num- 
ber, is the true standard; others, that feeling is; a 
third class, that civil law is. In either case it would 
be difficult to show that there is azy permanent 
standard. When they descend to specific precepts 
they still differ—one maintaining that whatever pas- 
sions may be safely gratified are lawful, another 
insisting on further restraints; one regarding adul- 
tery as a small sin, another as a great one; one 
thinking polygamy right, another deeming it wrong. 
Suppose they agree upon both general principles and 
specific precepts, and suppose that these are demon- 
strably right: where is their example? Christ gives 
not merely abstract, but concrete morals—the exam- 
ple of the perfect life in its author. 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET? 227. 


Moreover, the dzsposztzon to moral duty is more 
needed than its discovery. “ Probo meliora, detertora 
sequor,’ is the history of the race. Selfishness and 
passion bear down the sense of.duty, unless it is 
sustained by powerful motives. What motive has 
infidelity to control excited passion, check selfish- 
ness in the full tide of successful villainy, or move 
to benevolence, when there is no hope of earthly 
reward? Those of Jesus Christ are as great as can 
be conceived—the approbation of God, the appeals 
of infinite love, the joys of heaven, the pains of 
hell, all the interests of this life combined with the 
overwhelming interests of the future. All these 
motives are rendered more efficient by those wise 
proverbs, those divine harps, those prophetic visions, 
those matchless parables, those miraculous narra- 
tives, those epistolary instructions, those apocalyptic 
vistas, which so fix the attention and move the heart 
of every considerate reader of the Scripture. 

The Jewish revelation gave glimpses of both the 
outer: darkness and the mansions not made with 
hands; and so did the heathen mythology, but phi- 
losophy ascribed them to the zzvention of the poets. 
Christ made the future world certain and clear. 
He moves earth with a fulcrum, planted not on its 
bosom, but in the distant and future world, and he 
gives the lever he places on it the length of eternity. 
“ The worm never dies ;” the “life is everlasting.” 

But above and beyond all this is the Cross, which 
teaches, as nothing else can, the love of God, and 
constrains us_ to cry out, “ We love Him because he 


first loved us.” The mother, leaving her mansion and 
20 


228 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


going into a hut; laying aside her robes, and clothing 
herself with sackcloth; living on scanty meals, and 
going barefoot and bleeding to obtain them, that she 
may have means to defend a guilty son and save him 
from the scaffold; sighing, weeping, praying, sinking, 
dying broken-hearted over his crimes,—gives to him 
not only a sense of the heinousness of his sins, but 
of the love of his mother, such as nothing else could 
inspire. And as that son stands at her grave, what is 
there that he will not do or suffer, and esteem it a 
relief to do or suffer, to meet her dying wish? He 
needs no law to insure obedience. Love is enough, 
and it is swift. When we see Him, who thought it 
not robbery to be equal with God, making himself 
of no reputation, and humbling himself to a life of 
woe, crying upon the cross, as his soul looks into’ 
the darkness all round, “ My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me?” that he might bear our sins, eal 
us with his stripes, and raise us by his death, we feel 
a new and permanent and powerful impulse to right- 
eousness which needs no law, for it is a law to itself. 


“Talk not of morals! O, thou bleeding Lamb, 
The best morality is love of thee.” 


Nor is this all. One has said that Christ excelled 
all other moralists in this, that he puts the padlock 
not upon the hand, but upon the heart. But he does 
not use the padlock at all, he renders such a thing 
unnecessary. He takes the tiger from the heart and 
replaces it with a lamb. 

May you know “what is the hope of his calling, 
and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 229 


in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of 
his power to usward, who believe according to the 
working of his mighty power which he wrought in 
Christ when he raised him from the dead and set 
him at his own right hand in the heavenly places.” 

5. Christ solves the problem of ¢mortality. In 
all ages and nations men have had some idea of a 
future life, but beyond the sphere of Christianity it 
has been an uncertain and unsatisfactory one. Even 
among us, how often at the coffin do doubts over- 
whelm us! We speak to the corpse, but it hears 
not; we touch it, but it feels not; we lay it in the 
grave, and, like the remains of the dog, it mingles 
with the earth. Chemistry shows that it is resolved 
into oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, phosphorus, and that 
these elements, through the processes of nature, may 
enter into other animal forms. The progress of the 
natural sciences and the prevalence of a material phi- 
losophy deepen the shadows that, in civilized lands, 
rest upon the tomb. Men look for the soul at the end 
of the scalpel, or the microscope, and in the residuum 
of the crucible, but it is not there. 

We reply, that the operations of the soul—affec- 
tion, speaking through lips of clay; hope, beaming 
through eyes of flesh ; art, expressing itself through 
fingers of bone—are spiritual. So, too, many things 
expressed by it in cold, material forms—beauty, sit- 
ting upon the marble; goodness, beaming from the 
canvas; truth, from the page. The monument, the 
canvas, the page, may perish; but the beauty, the 
goodness, the truth, are immortal,—so, too, the soul 
from which it came. But the answer satisfies not the 


230 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


breaking heart. We recur to the arguments of Plato 
and Cicero; but they are unsatisfactory to us, and 
must have been to their authors. We fly to Butler 
and others, in modern times, who have carried on 
the argument with a force which answers objections, 
almost convinces, and always charms, but never 
scatters our doubts.. We turn to the life of the de- 
parted father, as we contemplate his death ; and, as we 
call to mind how he stored up the truth of God, we 
ask, If we may reason, from the Summer stores of the 
hive, that the bee will live through the Winter, why 
not, from the stores of truth, to the world to come? 
We feel a strange palpitating as we stand at the grave 
of the mother, and ask, If, as we pass over the mount- 
ain we find the compass agitated, we may infer the 
existence of ore, may we not, when the heart is agi- 
tated as it passes by the river of death, infer that 
there is soul there? 

But, after all, we say, Who has seen or handled 
the elements of eternity? Suppose we could be cer- 
tain of a future world, how, by mere reasoning, should 
we have knowledge of that state? The heathen think 
departed spirits either occupy a world of ghosts, 
where they sigh after the upper air, or that they pass 
from animal to animal, in an indefinite number of 
transmigrations. The last is the view of the majority 
of mankind to-day. How unsatisfactory! Your child 
is dead. You take your farewell look at its beautiful 
corpse. All its love and all your past happiness, all its. 
goodness and all your blasted prospects, come rushing 
over you. What comfort in reflecting that the de- 
parted spirit has passed into a cow, thence to pass 


CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 2g 


into a snake, then, it may be, into a toad, and so on 
forever, or to Nirwana? You would never know how 
to find or to recognize her, or to communicate with 
her. She would bear, in her different forms, neither 
affection for you, nor recollection of you. It is as 
though the grave took all, or worse. Nor is there 
much more of comfort in the other view—that of a 
world of ghosts, a dream-land, insubstantial, fleeting. 

In the Odyssey, Achilles complains in the lower 
regions: “Speak not another word of comfort con- 
cerning death, O noble Ulysses! I would far rather 
till the field as a day-laborer, a needy man, without 
inheritance or property, than rule over the whole 
realm of the departed.” We find, therefore, without 
surprise, upon some old monuments, “Thou who 
readest this, enjoy life; for there is neither laughter 
nor amusement nor any pleasure after death.” No 
wonder that, in classic ages, it was customary, at 
feasts and- drinking-parties, to place a silver skeleton 
on the table, and to pass it round with these words: 
“Woe to us poor creatures! what a cipher is man! 
Such shall we all become, when once Orcus carries 
us off.” 

This is the view which we generally adopt when 
we reject the Bible, as the idea of transmigration is 
repugnant alike to our feelings and philosophy. Many 
infidels teach that millions of spirits walk the earth 
unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep, while 
others, higher up, in successive circles, occupy the 
cloud-land; that they linger around earthly homes, 
occasionally breaking through to the real world, mani- 
festing, however, less thought and virtue, as well as 


232 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


less capacity of usefulness, than embodied spirits. 
Such a state holds out nothing inviting. Lo, some- 
thing not dreamed of in earthly philosophy! Jesus 
goes down to the tomb a corpse, enwrapt in grave- 
clothes, embalmed in spices, and comes up again. 
Mary held the same feet that bled upon the cross ; 
Peter saw the same head that was crowned with 
thorns; Thomas touched the same hands that were 
torn with nails; John felt the same throbbing heart 
that was pierced by the Roman spear. They all be- 
held him, whom they had loved upon earth and wept 
over in death, ascend into the heavens, to come again, 
visible, tangible, in like manner as he went. Now the 
mists of-eternity have a nucleus around which to con- 
dense, and our ideas of immortality become definite 
and clear. 

You have seen the chemist hold up a solution of 
some neutral salt, say blue vitriol; it looks like water, 
it moves like it, has the same specific gravity, nearly. 
He draws the cork, and drops into the bottle a solid 
crystal. The work of crystallization begins, and soon 
the liquid is turned into a mass of beautiful crystals. 
So the body of Christ, passing into the heavens, gives 
substantiality to what else were, to us, a world of 
shadows. The gates of pearl and rivers of life and , 
fields of living green aré real; the spirits of the de- 
parted take body; the skies become a solid sphere of 
happy being, a new heaven and a new earth, wherein 
dwelleth righteousness. Now we can lay the wife or 
the child in the grave, and say, “ Mary, I shall see 
thee again, not a ghost, but as I have seen thee—in 
body, but incorruptible, immortal, glorified, in all 


‘CHRIST OUR PROPHET. 233 


the brightness and beauty of our transfigured Lord.” 
Though our outward man decay, yet with our eyes 
shall we see God, and with a body radiant, obeying 
not earthly, but heavenly attractions, walk the blest 
fields with companions that we have loved. “Because 
I live, ye shall live also.” “QO, that my words were 
now written! O, that they were printed in a book, that 
they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the 
rock forever!’ What is it, O Job, that you would 
thus everlastingly perpetuate? “For I know that 
my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand in the 
latter day upon the earth; and though after my 
skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall 
I see God.” 

All theological truth is comprehended in Christ. 
Believe in him, and it is enough. You can not doubt 
in regard to God, if you believe in Christ ; for he is 
his Son. You can not doubt about eaven, for he 
came from there. How can you doubt about the ex- 
istence of China, if you know that A. B. came from 
thence? You can not doubt about the Mercy-seat, if 
you make prayer and receive answer, any more than 
you can question the existence of England, while you 
are trading to Liverpool, getting regular profits on 
your investments. What ponderous tomes about the 
inspiration of the Scriptures! Believe in Christ, and 
you need not read any of them, for he said “Search 
the Scriptures ;” he quoted them*as inspired—even 
Daniel, so much disputed. How much men have de- 
bated about the existence of hell! Believe Christ, 
and you have the question settled, for he tells you to 
“fear him that can destroy both soul and body in 


234 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


hell.” How many doubts and fears about the resur- 
rection! See Christ rising from the tomb, and they 
all are dissipated. Embrace Christ, and the rebellion 
is over, the Richmond of the soul taken. 

A friend said the other day: “I was once an offi- 
cer in the devil’s army. - Whatever clergymen might 
say of other men, I was willing that they should set 
me down as totally depraved. Once, when on picket- 
duty, near the gates of hell, I strayed beyond the 
lines, and met the Savior. One glance was enough ; 
I surrendered unconditionally, not even asking to re- 
serve my side-arms. Now for reconstruction. This 
was easy. I had been born with my back to the sun. 
Now right-about-face, and forward, march. I have 
not seen my shadow since, but am traveling the path 
that shineth brighter and brighter, by looking steadily 
at the Sun of righteousness.” 

But how shall we believe in Christ? What pon- 
derous volumes must be handled to get the historical 
and philosophical evidence? Nay, verily, God is not 
so exacting. “If any man will do his will, he shall 
know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether 
I speak of myself.’ Act upon the supposition that 
Christ is a divine Teacher, and you shall soon have a 
demonstration of its truth. The witnesses are around 
you. Yourself, may be a witness. “I wish,” said 
one, “that I could be placed before a court and jury 
sworn to render a verdict according to the evidence, 
with all the world to hear, and all the infidels on earth, 
and all the devils that have tormented my poor soul, 
and all the others in hell to cross-examine me, while I 
testify as to what Jesus has done for my soul.” 


- 


p! : 
2 


X. 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST 


N his epistle to the Hebrews, the sacred writer 

directs us to “consider the Apostle and High- 
priest of our profession, Jesus Christ.” Let us so 
contemplate him at this hour. 


I. Christ ts a peculiar Priest. 


He is so: 1. In his order, after the order of Mel- 
chizedek, who was a type of him in several particulars. 
(a2) He was a royal priest, King Melchizedek (right- 
eousness), of Salem (peace). (0) He was before the 
Aaronic priesthood. (c) He was superior to that 
priesthood, for he received tithes from Abraham, the 
progenitor of the whole Israelitish nation, and blessed 
him. Now, as the apostle argues, he who vecezves 
tithes is, officially, superior to him who fays them ; 
and he who élesses is superior to him who zs blessed. 
(2) He was without father and mother, that is, re- 
corded genealogy in the temple. (¢) He was a priest 
for life; the Aaronic priest had his official life limited 
by the ages of thirty and fifty. Of Melchizedek’s 
death we have no record. All that we know of him is 
as a living priest, without beginning of days or end of 
life. (/) He was without predecessor or successor. 

2. In his purity. All other priests were imperfect 

21 235 


~ 


236 . ‘EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


and defiled. They offered up sacrifices for their own 
sins ; for the law maketh high-priests which have in- 
firmity, whence they have need to offer for themselves 
as well as for the people. Christ, though made a lit- 
tle lower than the angels for the suffering of death, is 
yet holy, harmless, undefiled, free from sin, without 
taint of sinful passion, and separate from sinners, 
morally, as the high-priest, seven days prior to the 
expiation, and when he made that expiation, was, 
physically. He had not only negative but positive 
excellencies. As in his humanity he grew in stature 
and wisdom, so also in every virtue, human and divine, 


learning obedience by the things which he suffered, 


in all things crowned with glory and honor. 

3. In his immortality. Under the law were many 
priests, because they were not suffered to continue by 
reason of death. Christ was made priest not after the 
law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of 
an endless life. “The Lord hath sworn and will not 
repent, Thou art a priest forever.” Thus God con- 
firmed his counsel by his oath, “that by two im- 
mutable things, we might have a strong consolation 
who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set 
before us.» True, Christ died; but he was born 
from the dead. The Shunamite’s child, the corpse 
that touched the bones of Elijah, the young man of 
Nain, and Lazarus, brother of Martha and Mary, the 
daughter of Jairus, ruler of the synagogue, came from 
the grave to return thither again. Christ first came 
forth from the tomb to return no more, but to lead an 
innumerable company from the empire of death to 
the realms of immortality. He is not only immortal, 


ee 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST. 237 


but pre-existent. “ He is before all things,” not only 
pre-existent, but eternal—Alpha and Omega. 

What sorrow would fill our hearts if we were not 
sure that Christ can die no more!. We should have 
no assurance of our own immortality. Even after 
entering heaven, we might again be remanded to 
mortality and the tomb. “Because I live, ye shall 
live also,’ is the only foundation of unshaken trust. 
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who hath begotten us again unto a /zvely hope 
by the resurrection.of Jesus Christ from the dead to 
an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth 
not away, reserved in heaven (not on earth as millen- 
arians say), in the true Holy of Holies, within the veil 
whither the forerunner hath for us entered. The Jews 
had the highest expectation if, on the day of expiation, 
their high-priest came out alive. What may we not 
expect when ours enters within the veil to live forever! 

4. His call and inauguration, Even under the 
law, no man entered the priesthood but he that was 
called of God, as was Aaron. But the call of Christ 
was more imposing, for it was by oath of God. His 
induction, too, was surpassing: “And again when he 
bringeth in the first-begotten from the dead into the 
world [that is, the heavenly, for it was after his 
resurrection that Christ was made priest], he saith, 
And let all the angels of God worship him.” Hence, 
he, “when he had by himself purged our sins, sat 
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, be- 
ing made so much better than the angels as he hath, 
by inheritance, obtained a more excellent name [title 
and authority] than they.” They are but messen- 


238 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


gers-and spirits of the Throne, comparable to winds 
and flames for their efficiency and speed. “ But unto 
the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is forever and 
ever ; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy 
kingdom. . . . . And thou, Lord, in the begin- 
ning, hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the 
heavens are the work of thine hands. They shall per- 
ish, but thou remainest, and they all shall wax old as 
doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt thou fold them 
up, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, 
and thy years shall not fail.” What a call and inau- 
guration! Christ glorified not himself to be made a 
High-priest, but was constituted by the oath of God, 
and inaugurated by the Almighty amid the assembled 
angels. 

5. In his tabernacle. The Aaronic priests minis- 
tered in the temple at Jerusalem, where was a taber- 
nacle set in order for worship. In the entrance were 
the candlestick, the table, the show-bread; beyond 
the veil, in the Holy of Holies, the golden censer, the 
ark of the covenant containing the pot of manna, 
Aaron’s rod that budded, and the table of the cove- 
nant, covered by the mercy-seat and overshadowed by 
the cherubim of glory. In this tabernacle the priest 
ministered—in the outer apartment daily, in the inner, 
yearly, offering gifts and sacrifices. In this taber- 
nacle Christ could not minister; for if he were on 
earth he should not be a priest, seeing there are other 
priests that offer gifts according to the law, whose 
place he could not take; for he was not of their 
order, but of the tribe of Judah. This tabernacle was 
but a shadow of the original one in heaven; for Moses 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST. 239 


~ was directed to make all things according to the pat- 
tern showed to him in the mount. Its parts visible, 
perishable, were images of higher, permanent, and in- 
visible things—the outer court, probably, representing 
the earth, in which men dwell; the sanctuary, the 
Church, in which they draw nigh to God; and the 
Holy of Holies, the heavenly world—*“ the Holy Ghost 
this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was 
not yet manifested whileas the first tabernacle was 
yet standing.” Christ enters the heavenly tabernacle 
which the Lord pitched, not man; that house not 
made with hands, the house of God. For by the 
word of the Lord were the heavens made, 

6. In his sacrifice. The sacrifices of the law could 
not procure pardon of sin, else would they not have 
ceased to be offered. “For it is not possible that the 
blood of bulls and of goats should take away sin.” 
_ Long ago, God said, “I will take no bullock out of 
thy house, nor he-goat out of thy fold,” that is, as an 
atonement for sin; and his people, under conviction, 
cried out, “Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would 
I give it; thou delightest not in burnt-offering.” 
Rivers of oil, the cattle upon a thousand hills, can not 
atone, nor can even the fruit of the body suffice for an 
offering for the sin of the soul; for the law made 
nothing perfect. It was “a figure for the time, then 
present, in which were offered both gifts and sacri- 
fices that could not make them that did the service 
perfect as pertaining to the conscience ; which stood 
only in meats and drinks [to be avoided], and divers 
washings [of priests and people], and carnal ordi- 
rances imposed on them until the time of reforma- 


240 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


tion ;? which could only procure absolution for trans- 
gressions of ceremonial law, and restore offending 
worshipers to the benefits of the Mosaical covenant, 
until the coming of Messiah. “Every priest standeth 
daily ministering, and offering oftentimes the same 
sacrifices, which can never take away sins.’ Hence, 
the whole system was annulled for the “weakness and 
unprofitableness thereof.” Paul, both in the Epistle to 
the Romans and in that to the Galatians, shows that 
the moral law could. not justify any man, but left all 
guilty before God; in this Epistle he shows that the 
ceremonial law can not take away sin. Men were, in- 
deed, saved under the law, but by faith in the promise 
made to Abraham, before the law, of a coming Re- 
deemer, whose atonement the legal sacrifices typified. 
Multitudes passed to heaven, some through flood and 
fire and sword, but it is expressly said, “through 
faith, not having received the promises, but having 
seen them afar off, they were persuaded of them and 
embraced them, and confessed that they were stran- 
gers and pilgrims on earth, seeking a better country, 
that is a heavenly, so that God was not ashamed to 
be called their God.’ Seeing that the sacrifices of 
the law could not atone, Christ cometh into the world, 
crying, “Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but 
a body hast thou prepared me. Lo, I come (in the 
volume of the book it is written of me)’—for Daniel 
wrote that the sacrifices of the law should cease, and 
Isaiah, that Messiah should make his soul an offering 
for sin—“I come to do thy will.’ And thus, “he 
taketh away the first [legal sacrifices], that he may 
establish the second [the oblation of his body]; by 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST. 241 


the which will we are sanctified through the offering 
of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” Earth is 
the court of his tabernacle, Gethsemane, Calvary and 
its cross the triple altar, the Son of God the victim— 
a piacular offering for the world, sustained and ac- 
cepted by the Deity ; an offering which illustrates the 
bitterness of the cup of God’s wrath, that not the con- 
‘templation of its issues, or the presence of the in- 
dwelling Divinity, could deprive of its terrors; an 
offering that illustrates the certainty of punishment, 
for if God spared not his only and immaculate Son, 
how shall he spare the impenitent guilty? an offering 
that not only deters from sin, while it proclaims par- 
don, but vindicates the honor of God’s government, 
which rather than suffer contempt, thrusts its sword 
into Messiah’s breast. Thus has the world a sac- 
rifice who, being sinless in our nature, could offer 
satisfaction for our sins, and, being Divine, could lift 
himself from the grave, and lead his followers through 
it to glory, within the veil, the Holy of Holies in 
heaven. 

Away, ye shadows of the law; the eternal sub- 
stance is come! Away, sacrifices, types, ceremonies ; 
the great antitype is here! Well may we argue with 
the apostle, “If the blood of bulls and goats, and the 
ashes of an heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to 
the purifying of the flesh [from ceremonial defilement 
and so procures admission to the temporal tabernacle], 
how much more shall the blood of Christ, who [being 
sanctified] through the Eternal Spirit, offered himself, 
as a Lamb without spot, purge your conscience from 
dead works [works deserving death],” that so you may 


242 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


be admitted to serve the Living God in his Church 
here, and in his heavenly sanctuary hereafter! The 
sacrifices of the temple were frequently repeated. It 
was not needful that Christ should offer himself often, 
as the high-priest entered into the Holy of Holies with 
blood of others, to make atonement for sin: “For 
then must he have suffered from the foundation of the 
world ; but now once in the end of the world hath he 
appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” 
His death having an efficacy running back to the 
foundation of the world, as well as forward to its end, 
providing mercy for all the generations of men, we 
need no masses. 

7, In the covenant, of which he was Mediator. 
The moral law gave the rule of duty, the knowledge 
of sin; powerful to condemn, it gave no power to obey. 
It was weak, not in itself, but through the flesh, whose 
inclinations and desires for things forbidden brought 
forth fruit unto death, so that the things we would 
not, we do. It said, “Do this, and thou shalt live ;” 
the Gospel says, “ Walk not after the flesh, but after 
the Spirit, and ye shall live.” The law (considered as 
purely Mosaical) had no moral power ; its ceremonies 
were “weak and beggarly elements of the world.” 

The Gospel has spiritual power. Mark the terms 
of the new covenant: “I will put my laws into their 
minds and write them in their hearts, and I will be to 
them a God, and they shall be to.me a people... And 
they shall not teach, every man his neighbor, and 
every man his brother, saying, Know ye the Lord: 
for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.” 
This covenant had better promises. The law had 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST. 243 


only temporal promises—Canaan, prosperity, protec- 
tion ; the Gospel has promise of spiritual and eternal 
blessings—adoption into the family of God, a settle- 
ment finally in the heavenly world, and a preparaticn 
for it. It*is this better hope which the Gospel in- 
spires that makes the new covenant perfect, and ani- 
mateés us to purify ourselves from all filthiness of the 
flesh and spirit. The old covenant was the mountain 
visible, trembling, scorched with fire, encompassed 
with cloud and darkness, swept by tempest of thunder 
and lightning, and echoing to the sound of trumpet 
and voice of commands, so charged with terror that 
even the mediator cried out, “I exceedingly fear and 
quake.” The new covenant is Mount Zion, over- 
flowing with spiritual blessings ; the heavenly Jerusa- 
lem which emancipates, not the earthly which is 
in bondage; the city of the living God, thronged 
with angels, one with us in Christ, and ministering 
spirits to the heirs of salvation; the Church of the 
apestles, first-born of the Spirit, and of all whose 
names are written in heaven, where is God, the Judge 
of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect, and 
Jesus, the Mediator, and the blood that speaketh bet- 
ter things than that of Abel. 

8. In the blood which he offers. Under the old 
dispensation, when Moses had spoken every precept 
according to the law, he took the blood of bulls and 
goats, and didping in it sprigs of hyssop, bound with 
scarlet wool, he sprinkled both book and the people. 
Moreover, he sprinkled both the tabernacle and the 
vessels, for almost all things are by the law purged 
with blood, and without shedding of blood is no 


—— 


244 . EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


remission, All through the Mosaic economy, an atone- 
ment was made for the holy place, because of the sins 


of the people; not that these sins defiled the place, © 


but so defiled the people as to render them unworthy 


to approach it unless it bore the symbol of sacrifice. 


An atonement was also made for the tabernacle of the 
congregation in which God dwelt among men, and no 
one was permitted to enter it until that atonement 
was made. Thus by blood upon the footstool of 
Divine Majesty, men might present themselves be- 
fore it. 

While the patterns of the heavenly things were puri- 
fied with blood of bulls and goats to make them access- 
ible to men, the heavenly things themselves are puri- 
fied with better sacrifices. Christ entered into heaven 
itself, and sprinkling there his precious blood, as an 
acknowledgement and vindication of the Divine rights, 
has thus made the throne of justice a throne of grace, 
and the presence of God accessible to the supplica- 
tions and thanksgivings of penitent men, when offered 
through our great High-priest, whose golden censer 
hath much incense, with the prayers of all saints. 
By this blood the heavens are also made accessible to 
redeemed souls, after their probation. This blood is 
not only better than that of the law, but also that of 
the primal covenant offered by Abel, which made only 
one soul accessible to God, whereas this opens the 
way for the whole human race. 

9g. In his glory. Glorious was the high-priest of 
the temple, arrayed in gold and blue and scarlet and 
fine linen, in breast-plate and ephod, and robe and 
broidered coat, and miter and girdle. All are glori- 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST. 245 


ous in the upper world. John, in apocalyptic vision, 
saw an angel, and was about to worship him, until he 
said, “ See thou do it not, for I am thy fellow-servant.” 
In the symbolical visions of the entranced apostle, 
Christ is represented as having a hand holding seven 
stars, a countenance as the sun shining in his strength, 
a head with many crowns, a vesture dipped in blood, 
a thigh on which is written “King of kings, and 
Lord of lords,” and a girdle at which hang the keys 
of death and hell. In the calm words of Paul, “He 
is the brightness of the Father’s glory, the express 
image of his person.” His radiance illuminates the 
heavens. “And the city,” says John, “had no need of 
the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the 
glory of God did enlighten it, and the Lamb is the 
light thereof. And there shall be no night there.” 
His glory is underived, the efflux of his perfections ; 
the jewels of his crown are bought with his own 
blood. 


Il. He is a sympathizsing High-priest. 


“For we have not a High-priest that can not be 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities, but was 
tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin.” 
He took our nature that he might be a merciful and 
faithful high-priest, that he might “have compassion 
on the ignorant and them that are out of the way.” 
“For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, 
he is able to succor them that are tempted.” What 
conflicts did Christ endure in the wilderness, with the 
adversary ; in the world, with poverty and scorn and 
persecution ; in Gethsemane, with the powers of dark- 


246 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


ness; on Calvary, when he cried, “ Father, if it be pos- 
sible, let this cup pass from me!’ “No temptation 
hath happened to you, but such as is common to 
men, and God will, with every temptation, make a 
way of escape.” 

What gentleness does Christ show! To teach 
his disciples humility, he washes their feet. To all 
men he says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of 
me, for 1am meek and lowly, and you shall find rest for 
your souls.” ‘A bruised reed shall he not break, and 
smoking flax shall he not quench, until he send forth 
judgment unto victory.” He moved with majesty, yet 
without noise or ostentation or tumult. He stretched 
out his hand to the poor, and respected faith however 
small; bearing with patience the errors, infirmities, 
and persecutions of men; for “when he was reviled, 
he reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened 
not.” He fed the hungry and healed the sick, gave 
sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf; he cast 
out devils, cleansed lepers, and: raised the dead. 

His amazing power, which, if exerted in judgment, 
might have been the terror of the world, being ex- 
erted in mercy, became its admiration. His very look 
was compassion, and the touch of his garment was 
healing. He took up little children in the streets of 
Jerusalem, and returned them with his blessing on 
their heads, rebuking his disciples who forbade the 
anxious mothers to press them through the crowd, say- 
ing, “ Suffer little children to come unto me, and for- 
bid them not ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” 
He lamented over the doomed city that was about to 
put him to death. He wept at the grave of the 


Y . ow 


| 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST. 247 


departed friend, not because Lazarus was dead, for he 
was about to call him from the tomb, but in sympathy 
for the mourners. Those tears which fell from his 
eyes upon the-earth tell of sympathy in heaven for 
suffering men. “Behold how Christ loved him,” said 
the Jews. Learn how he loves you also. When 
about to die, he consoles his distressed disciples, for- 
getting himself in his desire to bless them; when he 
awakes the sleeping companions, it is without rebuke ; 
when he looks on blaspheming Peter, it is in love and 
pity. When pressed down under the world’s guilt, 
he speaks from the cross, charging his bosom friend 
to take care of his mother; even in the appalling 
darkness and the feeling of desolation which brought 
forth his bitterest cry, he turns to counsel and forgive 
the penitent thief. 

His exaltation has not diminished his tenderness. 
Joseph, his type, when reigning in Egypt, still casts 
his eye homeward, feels even for his guilty brethren 
a brother’s heart, and rests not until they are peace- 
fully settled around him. Nor does the increase of 
the Savior’s family diminish his love for them. He 
himself tells us how he discharges the pastoral office. 
He is the good Shepherd that calls his sheep all by 
name; that goes before them leading them into green 
pastures and beside still waters, making them fearless 
even in the gorges of the mountains whose over- 
hanging vegetation shuts out the sun and shelters the 
tiger, a very valley of death ; because the shepherd is 
no hireling that fleeth when he seeth the wolf com- 
ing, but one who lays down his life for the sheep. _ 
He is so merciful to the wanderer that he leaves the 


248 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


ninety and nine to go after it, and so considerate of 
the feeble that he carries the lambs in his arms. 


Ill. He zs an active High-priest. 


1. He works in the sphere of nature. His activity 
commenced before his human life. “My Father 
worketh hitherto, and I work.’ “For by him were 
all things created that are in heaven, and that are in 
earth, whether they be thrones or dominions, or prin- 
cipalities or powers, or things present or things to 
come; all things were created by him and for him, and 
by him all things consist.” God hath appointed him 
heir of all things, hence he is upholding all things by 
the Word of his power. Take your microscope, and 
examine the animalcule, millions of which can occupy 


a cubic inch of space; Christ works there in each in- | 


_ sect, each eye-ball, each globule of blood that cir- 
culates therein. Take your telescope; see that star in 
Orion, whose light started twenty thousand years ago, 
and, traveling twelve thousand miles a minute, has not 
yet reached our globe; Christ works there. 

2. He works in the sphere of providence. He 
stood by all through the stream of history. He 
observed the Egyptian, Persian, Grecian, Roman, 
and Gothic civilizations, with their millions on mill- 
ions, as they swept on to death. He marked every 
tear and trial and temptation, heard every sigh and 
every prayer, noted every pure intention, every strug- 
gle after virtue, and every condition of soul, which, 
had he been revealed, would have received him; and 
at the last day he will array those multiplied millions 
before him to be judged, not by the law they had not, 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST. 249 


but by the law they had; not with severity, but with 
equity, and in view of the sacrifice he made in love 
on. Calvary for the whole world. He mercifully 
winked at the times of that long and awful ignorance 
before his coming, nor did he command men every- 
where to exercise evangelical repentance until his 
cross was uplifted. 

He stands by to-day, to see the Arabian, Indian, 
and Chinese, as well as European and American, 
civilizations bearing on their myriads to the tomb. 
He marks each curse, each sin, each sorrow, each 
agony. He gathers into his ear all weeping and 
wailing and gnashing of teeth, and marks all stum- 
bling and terror on the dark mountains of unbelief, — 
and looks with compassionate eye upon each weary 
head as it drops on the pillows of despair or death. 
He sees, too, every repentant sigh and remorseful 
agony and earnest desire for pardon and purity ; and 
he will bend over all the sons of men with the feelings 
of the father who ran to meet the returning prodigal ; 
and he will judge each penitent soul in the spirit with 
which he judged the weak and wicked woman who 
washed his feet with her tears, and wiped them with 
the hair of her head. 3 

3. He works in the kingdom of grace. He 
always has done so. As the angel, Jehovah, he 
conversed with Adam in the garden, guarded Noah 
‘in the ark, covenanted with Abraham in Canaan, 
struggled with Jacob at Peniel, talked with Moses in 
the bush and on the mount, stood with drawn sword 
before Joshua under the walls of Jericho, and inspired 
‘the long line of prophets. “He is the Head of the 


250 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. | 


body, the Church; who is the beginning, the first-born 
from the dead; that in all things he should have the 
pre-eminence ; for it pleased God that in him should 
all fullness dwell.’ He calls his own ministers, 
whether apostles, evangelists, teachers, or pastors. 
No Church court can authorize a man to preach the 


Gospel ; it can only recognize in him the commission — 


of Christ. Jesus only can pardon sin and pronounce 
absoluticn. In his last conversation with his dis- 
ciples he said, It is expedient for you that I go away, 
but I will come to you. He promises to send the 
Holy Ghost, the Comforter, to abide with them for- 
ever, not only to comfort them, and lead them into all 
truth, but to convince the world of sin, of righteous- 
ness, and of judgment to come, and to glorify Christ 
by receiving the things of him, and showing them to 
his children. 

He hears the prayers of his people, and presents 
‘them to his Father. Wherever two or three are 
gathered together, in his name, there is he in the 
midst of them. Wherever the widow bows in prayer, 
or the soldier kneels in his tent, or the sailor weeps 
in his hammock, Christ’s ear is attent. He softens 
the pillow of every dying saint, and receives redeemed 
souls to his heavenly courts. What the dying Stephen 
saw, may the departing soul, leaving its house of clay, 
see,—the heavens opened and the Son of man stand- 
ing on the right-hand of God! When a father was 
attempting to comfort a mother on the death of her 
child, by assuring her that it had gone to heaven, 
she replied, in agony and tears, “ How should it 
know the way? it knew not its own parents.” Ah, 


, 
? 


CHRIST OUR PRIEST, 251 


mother! Christ knows the way, and he has the babe 
in his arms, 

4. Finally. He works in the upper world. There, 
our High-priest, he presents Azs sacrifices and our 
prayers. He calls Calvary to mind. It is related 
that when a noble youth, who had been maimed and 
mutilated most fearfully in the battle of Marathon, 
went into the court-room where his brother was tried 
for his life, he held up his useless stump, and looked, 
with trembling lip, first at his brother and then at the 
judges. Overcome by the piteous appeal, the court 
dismissed the case. Christ, our elder brother; ever 
liveth to plead for us, and show his scars on_ high. 
He prepares mansions for his people. These have 
not been standing empty from eternity, but come 
forth as occasion requires from the creative hand. 
As in the nebulous spaces, so in the Eternal Capital, 
Christ ever energizes. No city on earth is enlarging 
so rapidly as heaven; whole streets and squares are 
added every year. Christ is preparing a mansion 
there for us. It will be ready by the time we are. 
May be before the year is out we shall hear the voice, 
“Come, for all things are now ready!” 

How grand our dispensation! Our priest is not 
in the line of dying men, but immortal and immut-_ 
able; our altar, the cross; our sacrifice, the Lamb of 
God ; our tabernacle, the heavens, separated from the 
earth by the blue curtain embroidered with stars; our 
temple, the universe. Let your faith be in your High- 
priest ; not in his antemundane glory, nor through the 
shadows of the law, nor walking the earth with weary 


feet, nor giving up the ghost on Calvary, nor cold in 
22 


252 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Joseph’s borrowed tomb of rock; but at the right hand 
of the throne of God, shining with a righteousness 
more resplendent than the concentrated righteousness 
of ail men and angels—even if men and angels had 
never sinned—and say, Behold, O God, my Advocate, 
and look on me through him! 

What a death to all superstition is this grand doc- 
trine of redemption by faith in Jesus Christ! In the 
language of Father Hyacinthe: “Salvation in Jesus, 
by grace alone, through faith—salvation in him, known 
and realized in blessed peace and power—lifts its pos- 
sessor clean out of the world of superstition and de- 
lusion. It raises him above the reign of priestly 
mediatorship. The one High-priest above does all the 
proper priestly work for such a one. A thousand 
bonds are snapped asunder in a moment when the 
soul of a poor sinner finds its full rest in Christ. You 
need not prove to #zm that pains and penalties, pur- 
gatorial fires and priestly indulgences and absolutions, 
pilgrimages, high masses, and beads and censer, are 
all empty, needless, and vain. No: the val principle 
of all these has been nailed already to the true cross. 
The principle of them no longer triumphs in his heart. 
Grace reigns there now. He stands fast in the liberty 
wherewith Christ hath made him free, and he rejects 


every priestly interference that would bring him into 
bondage. The true priest, the great High-priest, has 
emancipated him from the thralldom of every usurper, 
The snare is broken, and the captive has escaped.” 


XI. 


CHRIST OUR KING. 


N the exercise of his kingly office, and as the heir 
of David’s throne Christ is— 


I. King of Lsrael. 


The fulfillment, in the Davidic kingdom, of the 
promise made to Abraham, was but a faint foreshadow- 
ing of a more perfect reign. Hence, when David 
would build a temple that the Eternal might dwell 
with his people, he was told that it was God’s purpose 
to set up his seed after him who should build a house 
for his name. This prediction, referring primarily to 
Solomon, had a higher reference, as is clear from. 
David’s words on the occasion. “And this was yet a 
small thing in thy sight, O Lord God; but thou hast 
spoken of thy servant’s house for a great while to 
come.” He particularly explains himself in Psalm cx: 
“The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right- 
hand, until I make thine enemies thy foot-stool ;’ 
which the Messiah (Matt. xxii, 43) applies to himself, 
saying, “How then doth David in spirit call him 
Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou 
on my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy foot- 
stool? If David then call him Lord, how is he his 
-gson?” Solomon, as well as David, seems to have 
253 


254 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


understood the prediction of Nathan in this remote 
and spiritual sense, for in the dedication of the tem- 
ple he cried: “O God of Israel, let thy word, I pray 
thee, be verified, which thou spakest unto David, my 
father. ~But will God indeed dwell on earth? Behold, 
the heaven and heaven of heavens can not contain 
thee, how much less this house which I have builded !” 
The whole current of prophecy points to a descendant 
of David to come in the distant future, and to be of 
a character superior to his ordinary posterity. “ Be- 
hold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall 
call his name Immanuel. For unto us a child is born, 
unto us a son is given, and the government shall be 
upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called 
Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlast- 
ing Father, the Prince of Peace.” 

Of the character of this king we read: “ There 
shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a 
branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit 
of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of counsel 
and right, the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of 
the Lord.” (Is. xi.) In relation to his Divine func- 
tions, Zechariah says: “ Thus speaketh the Lord of 
hosts, Behold the man whose name is the Branch ; 
and he shall grow up out of his place, he shall build 
the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory, 
and he shall sit and rule upon his throne; and he 
shall be a priest upon his throne, and the counsel of 
peace shall be between them both.” (Zech. vi, 12.) 
The second Psalm describes the extent of his empire: 
“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a 
vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, 


CHRIST OUR KING. ang 


and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord 
and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their 
bands asunder and cast away their cords from us. 
He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord 
shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak 
unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore dis- 
pleasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill 
of Zion. I will declare the decree; the Lord hath 
said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I be- 
gotten thee. Ask of me and I shall give thee the 
heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts 
of the earth for thy possession.” 

The results of his reign are beautifully set forth. 
Thus Isaiah: “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all 
my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the 
knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea;” 
and Joel describes the era as a complete regeneration. 
All nature participates in the change, and shares the 
joy; the mountains drop down with wine, and the 
hills flow with milk; wild beasts become tame, and 
venomous serpents lose their stings; all chains are 
broken, and all wounds are healed; all sins cease, and 
ali sufferings too ; a new covenant is made with the 
gathered people, and the Divine law is written in 
their hearts. | 

The Jews interpreted these prophecies literally. 
They could not suppose that God, who had adopted 
them as his people, covenanted with Abraham, and 
led them to Sinai, and given them the fathers and 
the prophets, would suffer them to lose their nation- 
ality. Even when Judea became a Roman province, 
they expected a king who should give them universal 


256. EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


dominion. Perhaps the more considerate of them ex- 
pected this to be achieved rather by moral than ma- 
terial means. Bishop Butler has drawn a picture of 
such a government: “In such a state there would be 
no such thing as faction; but men of the greatest 
capacity would, of course, all along, have the chief 
direction of affairs willingly yielded to them, and 
would share it among themselves without envy. 
Each of them would have the part assigned him to 
which his genius was peculiarly adapted ; and others 
who had not any distinguished genius would be safe, 
and think themselves very happy by being under the 
direction and guidance of those who had. Public 
determinations would really be the result of the 
united wisdom of the community, and they would 
faithfully be executed by the united strength of it. 
Some would, in a higher way, contribute to the 
public prosperity, and in it each would enjoy the 
fruits of his.own virtue. And as injustice, whether 
by fraud or force, would be unknown among them- 
selves, so they would be sufficiently secured from 
it in their neighbors. For cunning and false self- 
interest, confederacies in injustice, ever slight and 
accompanied with faction and intestine treachery,— 
these, on the one hand, would be found mere child- 
ish folly and weakness, when set in opposition against 
wisdom, public spirit, inviolable union, and fidelity ; 
on the other, allowing a sufficient length of years to 
try their force. Add the general influence which 
such a kingdom would have over the face of the 
earth, by way of example particularly, and the rev- 
erence which would be paid it, it would plainly be 


CHRIST OUR KING. 257 


superior to all others, and the world must gradually 
come under its empire; not by means of lawless 
violence, but partly by what must be allowed to be 
just conquest, and partly by other kingdoms sub- 
mitting themselves voluntarily to it throughout a 
course of ages, and claiming its protection one after 
another in successive exigencies. The head of it 
would be a universal monarch in another sense 
than any mortal has yet been, and the Eastern 
style would be literally applicable to him that all 
people, nations, and languages should serve him.” 
Hence, when Jesus taught his sublime doctrines 
in the valleys of Palestine and streets of Jerusalem, 
although his thoughtful hearers recognized him as a 
prophet, they did not hail him as a king. When> 
he asked his disciples, “Whom do men say that I 
am?” they answered, “Some say John the Baptist ; 
but some say Elias; and others one of the prophets ;” 
for a tradition founded upon words of Malachi pre- 
vailed that Elias should appear before the coming 
of Messiah, and should anoint him king. They, 
indeed, who saw in him a capability of assuming 
and maintaining dominion, would have crowned him. 
And they who invoked his power to heal, and the 
multitude who strewed palm-branches in his path, 
addressed him as “Son of David.” Nor did the 
Savior decline the title. The nation, however, turned 
from the lowly Messenger, as not having claims to 
Messiahship. Yet when he extered the world, the 
angel said to Mary (Luke i, 31): “Thou shalt con- 
ceive in thy womb and bring forth a Son, and shalt 
call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall 


2558 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord 
shall give him the throne of his father David. And 
he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever [while 
he hath a seed in being], and of his kingdom there 
shall be no end.” And when he J/eft the world, on 
Pilate’s asking him, “Art thou a king?” he replied, 
“Thou sayest it; that is, It is true—at the same 
time declaring that his kingdom is spiritual, as he 
had before explained to the mother of Zebedee’s 
children, soliciting office for her sons, that his crown 
should be thorns and his throne a cross. “My 
kingdom is not of this world.” Pilate seems to have 
apprehended him; for, as they led him forth in his 
thorn-crown and purple robe, he said, “ Behold your 
King.” How innocent, how far from affecting civil 
government or plotting against Czesar !—a mere King 
of Truth, I have no cause to condemn him, But 
the Jews insisted that, in claiming to be Messiah, he 
arrogated civil power, and were mortified when Pilate 
inscribed on the cross, “King of the Jews;” that is, 
the Messiah. 

The misinterpretation of the kingly character of 
Christ, resulting from national pride, was the reason 
why Jesus so gradually revealed his claims to the 
Jews. The first time he taught in Samaria he 
avowed his Messiahship, and both the woman at the 
well and the people whom she gathered around the 
Master, received at once the doctrine of a spirituai 
Messiah, crying, This is, indeed, the Savior of the 
world. When he healed the servant of the centurion, 
he enjoined no secresy, because there was no danger 
that a Roman soldier would fall into the Hebrew 


.f 


CHRIST OUR KING. 259 


snare of a carnal or political Messiahship. But John, 
languishing in prison, and learning that Christ had 
only a few fishermen following him, sent to ask, 
“ Art thou he that should come, or look we for an- 
other?” His own apostles could scarcely be divested 
of their Jewish conceptions, even after his death. 
The disciples, on the way to Emmaus, mournfully 
said, “We trusted it was he who should have re- 
deemed Israel.” This false view of Christ’s kingly 
office, which caused the Jewish nation to reject him, 
is taken by those who expect him, at his second com- 
ing, to establish a civil government and to reign per- 
sonally on the earth. Is it not a lowering of our 
conception of his character to suppose him occupy- 
ing a literal throne, using a copper seal, wearing a 
golden crown; to suppose Paul acting as Secretary 
of War; Peter, as Secretary of the Navy; the be- 
loved disciple, as Secretary of State; Matthew, count- 
ing his coin, as Secretary of the Treasury ; Bartholo- 
mew, among the mail-bags, bargaining with con- 
tractors; St. James, superintending the revenue, and 
revising the tariff; Luke, the beloved physician, draw- 
ing sword at the head of the army? Is this our 
idea of the King of kings, after eighteen hundred 
years of Christian progress? and are such to be the 
employments. of apostles, after eighteen centuries in 
glory? 

It was such a kingdom as this that-Judas wanted, 
in which to display his financial talents, and such a 
one that the devil desired our Lord to establish. In 
his last temptation, he points to the world and all 


its kingdoms and their glory, as they appear to Him 
23 


260 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


who knows all things, and says, in effect, to Christ: 
“Vou are come a king; the Jews expect you to 
make David’s throne that of the world; comply with 
their expectations; cast in your lot with me, for I 
have possession. With my control over mind, and 
yours over matter, nothing can stand in the way of 
your universal dominion. Only let my authority be 
undisputed in the zemple, and yours shall be unques- 
tioned in the field and the cabinet. The spiritual 
course, which you have marked out for yourself, is 
one of darkness and distress. I will resist you even 
unto death ; will imprison and bewilder and seduce 
your followers, and redden your sanctuary with blood. 
Choose between poverty and persecution on the one 
hand, and universal sovereignty on the other.” But 
our Savior said, in reply to the tempter, ‘Get the 
hence, Satan; for it is written, Thou shalt worship the 
Lord thy God.” 3 ‘ 

Christ, a spiritual King at first, becomes more 
and more so as he advances. In his early discourses 
he lays down the practical precepts of his kingdom ; 
in his more advanced nes, as in John vi, he discloses 
the method of redemption by sacrifice; in his last 
hours he stands as the Son of God, face to face with 
the Father, speaking of their inmost counsels. Then, 
passing over the Cedren to Gethsemane, he enters 
the bitter conflict, sows, in his own blood, the seeds 
of a new heaven and new earth, and re-enters the 
glory which he had with the Father before the world 
was. Thus was he a spiritual King to the Israelites 
who received him—the descendant of David, the heir 
of the promises. 


CHRIST OUR KING. 261 


Il. He ws King of saints. 

1. He did not remain in the tomb. God raised 
him from the dead, and set him at his own right 
hand above all power that is or ever shall be; for, 
“being found in fashion as a man, he humbled him- 
self [further], and became obedient unto death, even 
the death of the cross. Wherefore God hath highly 
exalted him [as to his manhood], and given him a 
name which is above every name; that at the 
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven [that is, angels], and things in earth [men], 
and things under the earth [the dead who are to 
be raised]; and that every: tongue should confess 
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the 
Father.” In the vision of the revelator we read: 
“After this, I beheld, and Jo,-a great multitude, 
which no man could number, of all nations and 
kindreds, and people and tongues, stood before the 
throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white 
robes, and palms in their hands, and cried with a 
loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth 
upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” 

2. Christ is head of the Church. Hence (Col. ii), 
“And ye are complete in him [as to knowledge | 
and virtue], which is the Head of all principality 
and power.” And chapter i, “And he is the Head 
of the body, the Church [as to government and grace], 
who is the beginning [of that Church], the first-born 
from the dead, that in all things he might have the 
pre-eminence ; for it pleased the Father that in him 
should all fullness dwell.” And in Eph. i, “ And hath 
put all things under his feet, and gave him to be Head 


262 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


over all things to the Church, which is his body, the 
fullness of him that filleth all in all.” 

3. With him are the graces of the Spirit. “ But 
of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made 
unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification 
and redemption,’—the wisdom that surpasses both 
all Judaism and all philosophy ; the righteousness of 
faith which the law could not give; the sanctifica- 
tion which is not merely relative, but absolute; the 
redemption, not from Babylonish captivity, but from 
the grave. 

4. He chooses the officers of the Churches. When 
he ascended on high, leading captivity captive, he gave 
gifts to men. And he gave some, apostles; and some, 
prophets ; and some, evangelists ; and some, pastors 
and teachers, for the work of the ministry, for the 
edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come in the 
unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of 
God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the 
stature of the fullness of Christ. Hence, we should 
pray the Lord of the harvest that Ze would send forth 
laborers into his harvest; for he oz/y can do it. He 
gualifies as well as calls them. No brightness of in- 
tellect, or amplitude of knowledge, or charms of elo- 
quence, will avail without his special gift. He ax- 
thorizes his ministers. “Go ye, teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the 
Son and of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe 
whatsoever I have commanded you; and lo, I am with 
you alway, even to the end of the world.” 

5. He animates his obedient children. “Now, 
there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and 


CHRIST OUR KING. 263 


there are diversities of administration, but the same 
Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it 
is the same God which worketh all in ail. But the 
manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to 
profit withal. For to one is given by the Spirit the 
word of wisdom ; to another the word of knowledge 
by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same 
Spirit ; to another the working of miracles; to another 
prophecy ; to another discerning of spirits; to another 
divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation 
of tongues. But all these worketh that one and the 
self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he 
will. For as the body is one, and hath many mem- 
bers, and all the members of that one body, being 
many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one 
Spirit we are all baptized into one body, whether we 
be Jews or Gentiles. . . Now ye are the body of 
Christ and members in particular.” (1 Cor. xii). “Let 
then no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary 
humility and worshiping of angels [for it seems there 
were spiritualists in those days], intruding into those 
things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his 
fleshly mind, and not holding the Head [Christ], from 
which all the body by joints and bands, having nourish- 
ment ministered, and being knit together, increaseth 
with the increase of God.” 

Thus, then, Christ is not merely king of Israel, 
abolishing its laws, and demolishing its temple service 
to establish higher and holier ones ; but he is the King 
of a new and wider kingdom, the kingdom of heaven 
on earth. This is the kingdom which Daniel (ii, 44) 
predicted: “ And in the days of these kings shall the 


264 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be 
destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other 
people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all 
these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever ;” and all 
peoples and nations and languages shall serve its 
monarch. This is the kingdom which John the Bap- 
tist, and Christ and his twelve and his seventy, an- 
nounced when they cried, “ Repent, for the kingdom 
of heaven is at hand.’ The kingdom for whose com- 
ing we are to offer our daily prayer, which is to be 
sought as our chief concern, to be entered by a new 
birth of water and the Spirit, of which no man can be 
a subject if he do not the will of God, or if having 
put his-hand to the plow he look back, or if he do 
not endure afflictions and persecutions with much 
patience; a kingdom which neither fornicators, nor 
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers 
of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, 
nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortionate shall in- 
herit; a kingdom whose fruits are not meats and 
drinks, but righteousness and peace and joy in the 
Holy Ghost ; a kingdom, the least of whose subjects 
enjoys a higher illumination than the greatest of the 
prophets. It is a spiritual corporation, visibly organ- 
ized into congregations of faithful men, in which the 
pure word of God is preached, and the sacraments 
are duly administered. Over this kingdom Christ 
‘\breathes his spirit and sways his scepter, sanctifying 
sorrows, administering chastisements, inspiring vir- 
tues, bringing all thoughts and words and works into 
sweet conformity to his will. When this work shall 
have become universal; when without any violence to 


CHRIST OUR KING. 265. 


the human mind, every thought and impulse of every 
man is righteous,—then will his work be accomplished, 
and he will present his faultless bride to his Father. 

This enthronement of Christ over the mind of 
men is steadily going forward. Mark what has been 
already achieved. His kingdom embraces the princes 
in the realm of mind. Bacon, after opening the gates 
of science, opens the pages of the Gospel, exclaiming, 
“Here is the complement of knowledge, the sabbath 
-of the human intelligence, the divine day of illumina- 
tion and repose.” Newton, learning the laws of the 
stars, bows before Jesus as a child. Milton falls at 
his feet, and pours forth his soul in sublimest song. 
It embraces the nations of highest civilization. They 
are all beneath the Cross. It is maintained by simple 
authority. Other mental monarchs rule by logic; 
Christ’s word is law—it is satisfying to his subjects. 
His truth, in the hands of his disciples, like the bread 
he brake upon the mountains, is an ample supply for 
the millions that gather to his table. 

His dominion is everlasting. His words being 
in harmony with nature, whatsoever he binds on 
earth is bound in heaven. It extends to the depth of 
the soul. When all other ideas are blotted from a 
good man’s mind, Christ is left. No word like his 
to a dying man. “Bishop Beveridge, do you know 
me?” said his friend. ‘No,’ replied the dying man. 
“Bishop, do you know me?” said his loving wife. 
“No.” “Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?” 
“Yes, I know him well. When I was sinking in the 
mire, he raised me up, and set my feet upon a rock, 
and put a new song in my mouth; I know him well,” 


266 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Christ’s dominion is all-embracing. Moses was a 
Jew, Socrates a Greek, Confucius a Chinaman, Mo- 
hammed an Arabian, Zoroaster a Persian; Christ is a 
man. He commands the sympathies of all men, and 
minds of all grades, all tastes. All ages gather en- 
tranced around Him who says, “ Learn of me, for I am 
meek and lowly, and ye shall find rest to your souls.” 
Every other religion is limited—one to the banks of 
the Ganges, another to the lands within reach of 
Mecca; one to a stationary civilization, another to a 
progressive. Even Judaism hung its harp on the 
willows of Babylon. Christianity teaches a common 
fall, a common brotherhood, a common salvation ; and 
its principle, its proclamation, its promise, and _ its 
prayer, are all universal. Other religions have risen 
and decayed; Christ’s comes down the ages in the 
strength of youth, through the seas of popular com- 
motion like the spirit of God on the face of the 
waters, through the storms of philosophy like an 
apocalyptic angel, and through all the wilderness of 
human thought and action like the pillar of fire be- 
fore the camp of the Israelites. While the microscope 
destroys one religion and the telescope another, and 
steam and types and telegraphs threaten destruction 
to all the rest, Christ makes them all the heralds and 
auxiliaries of his advancing empire. 

Ho, ye patient fishermen, that toiled all night on 
the sea of the old philosophy, and caught nothing,— 
wake from your dust on the banks of the Euphrates, 
the Nile, the Ilissus, and see Jesus, on the solid globe, 
in the world’s morning light, beside his Gospel fire, 
with his net /w// of fishes. Ye proud, but forgotten 


- 


_ CHRIST OUR KING. 267 


pretenders, that laughed the Cross to scorn, look from 
your outer darkness upon Him who sits upon the 
throne of the world’s mind. You, Pilate, that led him 
forth with crown of thorns, lift up your eyes and 
behold Him who stands with the mental trophies of 
Europe and America, and holding at his girdle the 
keys of Asia, Africa, and the islands of the sea. Ye 
doubting Thomases, come to the Rock of Ages, and 
listen to the voice that rises from its clefts: 
“In my hands no price I bring ; 
Simply to thy Cross I cling.” 

Ye living scorners, who open “the mouth in blas- 
phemy against God, to blaspheme his name and his 
tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven,’ come 
from your dwelling-place of tombs, and look upon that 
Sun to whose face may be traced every ray of sav- 
ing light that ever met the eye-balls of a sinner. Ye 
Jews, that said, Let him come down from the cross 
and we will believe, look out from your own cross of 
eighteen centuries, to see Him who from his sepulcher 
hath been going forth conquering and to conquer. 
Hail, King of saints! Ride forth, till all minds submit 
to thy sway! How poor a mere kingdom of bodies— 
even though its king spake thunder, wore clouds, and 


_ wielded lightning, and made the mountains flow with 


milk, the rivers with gold, and the hills with dia- 
monds—compared with this kingdom of immortals! - 


Ill. Christ is King of the universe. 


He is Head of creation (Col. 11): “ For by him all 
things were created that are in heaven, visible and 
invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or 


268 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


principalities, or powers; all things were created by 
him and for him.” What a sweeping clause! Al! 
things visible—metals, stones, earth, waters, suns, 
stars, vegetables, animals, elements ; things invisible— 
the angelic hosts, heaven, hell. Take a drop of water 
apply the microscope to it,—what a world of wonders! 
Turn your telescope upon the planetary orbs, then run 
your mind’s eye upon the intervals between. Take 
the smallest plant, examine it with your most delicate 
instrument, then turn to the great cedar ascending 
four hundred feet into the fields of light, and think 
of all that lies between these extremes. Place the 
smallest insect under your magnifying glass, then turn 
to behemoth trusting he can draw up Jordan into his 
mouth, and run your mind’s eye on all the species 
between these two. Think too of the universe of 
spirit, from instinct to reason; from uncultured rea- 
son up the ascent of cultivated ; from the powers and 
adjustments of the human mind to those of angels ; 
through all the orders and thrones and principalities 
on high,—and you will have formed but an imperfect 
conception of the universe. 

Christ, says Paul, made it. This is corroborated, 
both positively and negatively, by St. John: “All 
things were made by him, and without him was not 
any thing made that was made.” They were made by 
him, as the cause; for him, as the ezd. By him, too, 
‘in the words of Scripture, “all things covszst.” It - 
requires as much power to hold a being in existence 
as to create. All things repose in him as their origin, 
and wait on him as their head. 

He is an independent King. Men become sover- 


CHRIST OUR KING. 269: 


eign either by inheritance, usurpation, or delegation; 
but in either case the power was in existence before 
they received it. Nothing preceded Christ. He is an 
absolute King. No created sovereign can reach to all 
the susceptibilities of the beings controlled. Christ 
does. He is arightful King. Our ideas of right are 
derived from creation. How perfect the right of 
Jesus who creates out of nothing, and adds the rights 
derived from preservation and redemption. He is a 
beneficent Sovereign. He created for his glory ; and 
as the happiness of his creatures promotes this, he 
must desire it, and can not be the author of sin. He 
is also a wise King, governing the natural world by 
natural laws, the moral one by motives, and having 
devised for fallen men a scheme to save them without 
interfering with their freedom. 

He is divine. “In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” 
God can not be seen; he must be represented. Na- 
ture represents his natural attributes. Providence, 
partially, his moral attributes. Jesus comes forth the 
brightness of the Father’s glory, the express image of 
his person, exhibiting his attributes complete, many 
of which could not otherwise be known. For exam- 
ple, neither earth nor heaven contained the revelation 
of righteousness on the one hand, and love upon the 
other. He is the ov/y image of God ever presented to 
man—the angel, Jehovah, that talked with Adam at 
the cool of the day, with Abraham in his tent-door, 
with Moses on the mount. Such is the apostolic 
doctrine of Christ. 

It may, however, be asked, Did the apostles under- 


270 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


stand his character? They did not at first; but he 
gradually taught them his divinity. Mark his own 
teaching. At the well of Sychar he said, “If thou 
knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith unto 
thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst have asked of 
him, and he would have given thee living water.” 
“Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give, 
shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give 
him, shall be in him a well of water springing up 
into everlasting life.” Boldly does he follow this 
up with the announcement that he is the Messiah, 
who, according to the expectation of his hearers, 
“should tell all things.’ He supersedes the Sab- 
bath. Having healed one on the Sabbath, the Jews 
sought to kill him. Mark how he justifies himself: 
“My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.” God 
indeed rested on the seventh day from the work of 
creating new beings, but not from the sustentation 
of existing beings. Should he cease for one mo- 
ment to work, the universe would be a ruin. Now, 
as if he had said, “As God works ever, so do I; 
whatsoever he doeth, these also doeth the Son like- 
wise.” Not merely does he work concurrently with 
the Father in upholding the universe, but as monarch 
of the dead. “For as the Father raiseth up the 
dead and quickeneth them, even so the Son quick- 
eneth whom he will.’ In many miracles he illustrates 
this power. 

On one occasion, after interrogating his disciples 
as to what people said of him, he asked, “But whom 
say ye that I am?” Peter answers for the twelve, 
“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 


CHRIST OUR KING. 271 


Did the Savior rebuke him? Mark his words: 
“Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and 
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father 
which is in heaven; and I say also unto thee, That 
thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my 
Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven.” Who but King of kings and 
Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, can use 
such words? 

While revealing less and less dimly his approach- 
ing sufferings erecting higher and higher at the 
end of his pathway the mysterious cross, he asserted 
more and more clearly his divinity. As if to fortify 
in their sublime faith the favorite circle that were to 
be eye-witnesses of his final agony, he takes up Peter 
and James and John into a mountain, and as he 
prayed, his face did shine as the sun, and his rai- 
ment became white as the light. And there appeared 
Moses and Elias talking with him. As they were 
departing, a cloud came over them, and the voice of 
the Father cried once more, “This is my beloved 
Son; hear him.” 

Jesus, at the mouth of the sepulcher, spake words 
suitable to God only. “I am the resurrection and ~ 
the life; he that believeth in me, though he were 
dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” 
Mark the response: “I believe that thou art the 
Christ that should come into the world.” When he 
brake the bars of the dead, he did it in his own 
name, “Jazarus, come forth”—as God said over 


272 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


chaos,. “ Let there be light”—and he on whom cor 
ruption had seized, arose. He assumes a title which 
is exclusively applied to Jehovah—‘“I am.” He 
appropriates it in such a way that he can not be 
mistaken, coupling with it an assertion of his exist- 
ence prior to his human life: “Before Abraham was, 
I am.” When Philip saith unto him, “Show us the 
Father, and it sufficeth us,” he replies: “Have I 
been so long time with you, and hast thou not 
known me, Philip? He that hath seen me, hath 
seen the Father. How sayest thou then, Show us 
the Father? Believe me, that I am in the Father, 
and the Father in me.” 

When Thomas cried out before the open side and 
pierced hands, fresh from the grave, “ My Lord and 
my God!” did he blaspheme? When grateful men 
fell at his feet and worshiped, did he rebuke them? 
We have seen that he claimed power over nature 
and the region of the dead; he claims power over 
the moral world also. “Son, thy sins are forgiven 
thee.” When they (the Jews) heard these words, 
they called them blasphemous. “Who can forgive 
sins but God?” Christ, admitting that it was God’s 
prerogative, proved his right to exercise it by mira- 
cles. Again he says, “For the Father judgeth no 
man, but hath committed all judgment unto the 
Son, that all men should honor the Son as they 
honor the Father.” Therefore the Jews sought the 
more to stone him, because he had not only broken 
the Sabbath, but said also that God was his father, 
making himself equal with God. Here, then, ho 
used language which his hearers understood to be 


CHRIST OUR KING. 273 


a distinct assertion of his Godhead. If he did not 
intend to do so, why did he not explain himself? 
But instead of doing so, he confirmed his declaration. 
On another occasion he teaches in the plainest terms 
that at the last day he will come attended by his 
holy angels, assemble all nations before him, and 
award to each man according to his deeds. God only 
can do this. That Divinity was incarnated in him, he 
certainly asserts in such modes that his hearers could 
not misunderstand him. Even when concealing the 
truth, he deposited it. It lies imbedded in his mira- 
cles, his prophecies, his parables, his passion. 

That Christ is human also is clear. In some 
passages his humanity only is spoken of, as where 
he says, “My Father is greater than I.” Blessed 
be God that he was a man! and, to adopt the lan- 
guage of another, “To this day is it not the best 
answer to all blasphemers of the species, the best 
consolation when our sense of its degradation is 
keenest, that a human brain was behind his fore- 
head and a human heart beating in his breast, and 
that within the whole creation of God nothing more 
elevated or attractive has been found than he? And 
if it be answered that there was in his nature some- 
thing exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must 
not be measured by the stature of Christ, let us re- 
member that it was precisely thus that he wished it 
to be measured, delighting to call himself the Son 
of man, to call the meanest of mankind his brothers. 
_If some human beings are abject and contemptible, 
if it be incredible to us that they can have any high 
dignity or destiny, do we regard them from so great 


274 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


a height as Christ? Are we likely to be more pained 
by their faults and deficiencies than he was? And 
yet he associated, by preference, with these meanest 
of the race; no contempt for them did he ever ex- 
press ; no suspicion that they might be less dear than 
the best and wisest to the common Father ; no doubt 
that they were naturally capable of rising to a moral 
elevation like his own. There is nothing of which 
a man may be prouder than this; it is the most 
hopeful and redeeming fact in history ; it is precisely 
what was wanting to raise the love of man to en- 
thusiasm. An eternal glory has been shed upon the 
human race by the love Christ bore it.” 

There are passages in Holy Scripture in which 
the union of the two natures is spoken of, as where it 
is said that he purchased the Church with his blood, 
Here the power to purchase is of the Divinity ; the 
material used in the purchase, of the humanity. As 
he approaches his last hour we see the two natures 
blended. “She is come beforehand to anoint my 
body for the burial,” he says, as Mary pours the oint- 
ment on his feet; yet, arising from the forebodings 
of death, he revives an old prophecy, as he enters 
Jerusalem riding on an ass, while the streets are 
green with palm-branches and vocal with hosannas, 
and the blind and the lame throng the temple to 
receive his healing touch. Ascending the hill, he 
sheds tears, like a man, over the city that had hailed 
him, and would crucify him; and he predicts, as a 
- God, its coming doom. He seeks figs, as a hungry 
man; he blasts the fig-tree with the breath of the 
Almighty; he walks from Bethany with human foot- 


CHRIST OUR KING. 275 


steps; he clears the temple with Divine words. 
Weak as a lamb before her shearers, in presence 
of a Pilate, he silences Sadducees, confounds Phari- 
sees, rejects the nation of the Jews, and opens the 
kingdom of heaven to the Gentiles. 

Betrayed by Judas because of his humiliation, 
that very humiliation inspired the traitor with the be- 
lief that Jesus was what he professed to be, and over- 
-whelming him with remorse, filled his mouth with the 
testimony of his Savior’s innocence. He washes the 
feet of his disciples, and binds their souls by a new 
commandment. He gives bread and wine, but as the 
emblems of forgiven sin and eternal life. As man, he 
enters the garden of Olives; as God, he enters the 
wine-press of Divine justice ; as man, he cries, “If it 
be possible, let this cup pass from me;” as God, he 
_ bears up under the weight of the world’s sins. 

Though as man he is arrested and smitten on the 
cheek, yet, before the supreme court of the nation, 
under an oath duly administered in a judicial proceed- 
ing, and in full view of the punishment of death, he 
asserted that he is “ Christ, the Son of the living God ;” 


__ and added, “ Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man 


sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the 
clouds of heaven.” And for this, as blasphemy, he 
was condemned to death. If he had used the words 
in a mystical sense, would it not have been his duty to 
save his judges from their awful crime? As man, he 
hangs on the cross between thieves, and in the place 
of a murderer, who was released to make him room ; 
as God, he rises from the tomb, and ascends the 
heavens ; as man he cries, “ Father, forgive them ;” 
24 


276 © EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


as God, “Thou shalt be with me in Paradise ;” as 
man, he drinks the vinegar and gall; as God, he rends 
the earth, darkens the heavens, and quickens the dead. 
I see no middle ground. Either Christ was an im- 
postor or he is Divine.. If the former be true, we 
have no Savior, the world has none. Appalling, in- 
deed, would be our case if this were so. It is mat- 
ter of experience, as well as revelation, that we have 
all sinned, and come short of the glory of God. 
Massillon, on one occasion, cried out: “I confine 
myself to you who at present are assembled here; I 
include not the rest of men; but consider you alone 
existing on the earth. The idea which occupies and 
frightens me is this: I figure to myself the present as 
your last hour and the end of the world; that the 
heavens are going to open above your heads; our 
Judge to appear in all his glory in the midst of this 
temple; and that you are only assembled here to 
await his coming, like trembling criminals, on whom 
the sentence is to be pronounced, either of life eternal 
or of everlasting death ; for it is vain to flatter your- 
selves that you will die more innocent than you are at 
this hour. All those desires of change with which 
you are amused, will continue to amuse you till death 
arrives ; the experience of all ages proves it. The only 
difference you have to expect, will, most likely, be 
only a larger balance against you than you would have 
to answer for at present; and from what would be 
your destiny, were you to be judged at this moment, 
you may almost decide upon what will take place at 
your departure from life. Now, I ask you (and con- 
necting my own lot with yours, I ask it with dread), 


CHRIST OUR KING. 277 


were the Almighty to appear in this temple, in the 
midst of this assembly, to judge us, to make the dread- 
ful separation between the goats and sheep, do you 
believe that the greatest number of us would be placed 
at his right hand? Do you believe that the number 
would at least be equal? Do you believe there would 
even be found ten upright and faithful servants of the 
Lord, when, formerly, five cities could not furnish so 
many? I ask you; you know not, I know not. Thou 
alone, O my God, knowest who belong to thee!” 

Ah, my brethren, we may go farther than Massil- 
lon. Is there a man among us, is there one on earth, 
can all history furnish a man, who can lay his hand 
upon his heart, and, with an eye upon the Almighty, 
say, O God, thou knowest all things, thou knowest 
that, from the first dawn of accountability to the pres- 
ent hour, I have always kept thy righteous law, act- 
ing, speaking, thinking, with a simple and loving 
- reference to thy pleasure alone? If not, is there a 
man who is able to go to the judgment of the last day 
alone? But if Jesus be Divine, then who that will 
accept him as his king, his priest, his prophet, his 
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemp- 
tion, that can not be saved? You may be a dreadful 
failure. He is a Divine success! Who shall lay any- 
thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that 
justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? We dare all 
devils in hell, we defy all accusers on earth, we chal- 
lenge all angels in heaven. “It is Christ that died, 
yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right- 
hand of God, who maketh intercession for us.” He is 
an all-sufficient Redeemer, one having a human heart 


275— EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


with an almighty hand; like the sun, which, while it 
warms an insect’s wing, holds the planets in their 
orbits. This Divine man, actualizing the idea of 
communion between God and man, enables zs to veal- 
azé it. He has cabled the gulf between earth and 
heaven, so that laying hold on him, we lay hold on the 
Almighty. 

With a single galvanic cell, composed of a few 
drops of acid in a silver thimble, one can converse 
through the Atlantic cable with the opposite conti- 
nent—the electric messenger traversing thousands of 
miles in a second of time. So, in a breath, a moment, 
the soul that can make connection with Christ, can 
commune with God; and, as electricity is every-where 
diffused, though nowhere visible, so is Christ. 

“Who,” then, “shall separate us from the love of 
Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, 
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” “ Nay, in 
all these things we are more than conquerors, through 
him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither 
death, nor life,’ nor angels, nor principalities, nor 
powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be 
able to separate us from the love of God which is in 
Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

We sometimes tremble as we see Jesus in his 
humiliation. Mark him before Pilate. The populace 
had slunk to their homes, the palm-branches had dried 
up, the hosannas had died away ; the weary, worn, and 
sandaled peasant, after a night of prayer and agony, 
forsaken of all his friends, stands before the represent- 
ative of the monarch of the world, and says, “I ama 


- 


CHRIST OUR KING. 279 


king.” What does the world think of that declara- 
tion, when Jesus, arrayed in mock robes, with a mock 
scepter in his hand, was derided and insulted by a 
brutal soldiery; and when, subsequently, he was led 
to the cross, as a sheep to the slaughter, and when he 
uttered that bitter cry, “My God, my God, why hast 
thou forsaken me?” But there is no mistake. The 
Church and the ages, the earth and the heavens, say 
there is no mistake. In his discourses, his miracles, 
his parables, his sufferings, his resurrection, he gradu- 
ally raises the pedestal of his humanity before the 
world, but under a cover, until the shaft reaches from 
the grave to the heavens, when he lifts the curtain 
and displays the figure of a man on the throne, for 
the worship of the universe; and clothing his Church 
with his own power, he authorizes it to baptize and to 
preach remission of sins in his own name. 

He is a King; and slowly but steadily through the 
ages, amid the shock of armies and the ruins of em- 
pires, he has been organizing that kingdom whose 
emblem is the woman clothed with the sun, sandaled 
with the moon, and crowned with the stars, and whose 
offspring is worthy to be caught up to God. His 
principles, destroying all false philosophies, and free- 
ing, rousing, energizing the human mind; his civiliza- 
tion, bridging Niagara, touching mountains, cutting 
asunder continents by canals, and uniting them by 
lines of lightning beneath the seas and links of fire 
above them; his Churches, bestudding Europe and 
America with radiant points of light; millions of 
Sabbath-schools, with palm-branches and hosannas ; 
missions girding the globe with centers of truth and 


280 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


love, pushing back the belt of error and vice, and 
opening the way to commerce, science, justice, liberty 
and good-will ; kingdoms and empires opening their 
gates to the hosts of God’s elect, advancing fair as 
the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army 
with banners, while the drums of Divine Providence 
are beating the reveille of the millennial morning,— 
prove that Christ is King. But the triumphs that 
are seen are nothing to those that are not, both past 
and future. 

A Sabbath-school superintendent, wishing to have 
a great commemoration of the happy Christmas-time, 
built up tier after tier in the spacious cathedral, and 
arranged trees between them, hanging cages of ca- 
naries among the fragrant branches. Over the cages 
he suspended blankets. When the time arrived, and 
the children filled the aisles and transept, and the 
charmed spectators crowded the galleries, all at once 
the blankets were lifted, and the sunlight, the warmth, 
the fragrant trees, woke up the slumbering birds, who 
broke forth in tuneful song, filling the whole space 
with one wave of delicious music. To complete the 
charm, the children raised their harmonious voices, 
and gallery on gallery swelled the great volume of 
melody as it ascended in that grand song, 


“ All hail the power of Jesus’ name!” 


So Christ is building tier on tier, in the temple of 
the heavens, where he is suspending the caged birds 
of melodious voices among the invisible groves of 
‘the tree of life. Soon will the high day arrive, the 
angel’s trumpet sound, and the blankets of the grave 


CHRIST OUR KING. 281 


be raised, and the warmth and light and beauty of 
heaven will waken every tuneful power, and the 
assembled angels and archangels will sing with the 
redeemed and astonished saints, 


* All hail the power of Jesus’ name !” 


filling the whole heaven with one volume of un- 
equaled song, great as the voice of many waters 
and of mighty thundering, harmonious as the con- 
cert of ten thousand harps. 


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MER ACIIES. 


S Christianity is established in the mind of 
Christendom, the burden of proof is with its 
opposers. Still, it may be well, in a skeptical age, 
occasionally to revert to the foundations of our faith. 
Infidelity has invaded the Church, often putting on 
the badges of ecclesiastical authority, eating the bread 
of the Lord’s table, and teaching his children; and 
though in the garb of an angel of light, and speaking 
in the sacred names of God, Reason, and Freedom, it 
has all the venom of an angel of darkness. Usually, 
it accepts the Bible as a grand product of antiquity, 
and system of morality, and fountain of devotion; the 
Church, as a support of the State, a means of civiliza 
tion, and a source of refinement; the Savior, as a 
teacher, of charming rhetoric, pure character, and 
wholesome doctrine, to which he sacrificed his life— 
but it would eliminate from them all the miraculous 
element. 
This tendency of modern thought is not surpris- 
ing, considering the almost exclusive cultivation of 
the natural sciences, and employment of human ge- 


nius in material entervrises. Against it we assert that 
25 283 


284 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Jesus Christ authenticated a divine mission by mir- 
aculous acts. We prove this proposition by a few 
sucessive steps; namely: miracles are possible, prob- 
able, provable, proved. 

I. Miracles are possible. This would not be as- 
serted if it had not been denied. Strauss says that 
the chain of finite causes being inviolable, a miracle is 
not possible. But this is assuming what ought to be 
proved, what can not be proved, and what can be 
disproved. 

a. If nature is bound in an eternal, inviolable chain 
of finite causes and effects, religion and even Provi- 
dence are impossibilities, human responsibility isa 
delusion, and prayer a folly. But what say the uni- 
versal reason and universal heart to such conclusions? 
Indeed, to deny the possibility of miracles is stark 
atheism. God is a supernatural being. A super- 
natural being must have supernatural powers ; he who 
has supernatural powers must be capable of super- 
natural acts. 

6. To deny'’that God ever modifies the order of 
natural sequences, is to make him inferior to man, 
who is at all times operating on the line of causes 
and effects, and modifying results at his will. 

c. That God has modified the order of nature, the 
elobe itself shows ; for it was not created at once, but . 
by successive acts, as geology proves. The destruc- 
tion of one set of species and the creation of a dif- 
ferent set, and the alteration of the conditions of the 
globe to adapt it to the new creations, being not the 
~~ results of established laws, but of the overrulings of 
them, are so many different miracles. The successive 


< 


MIRACLES. 285 


strata of the world’s crust record more miracles than 
the successive leaves of the Bible; nor are the mira- 
cles spoken from the mouths of prophets more won- 
derful than those recorded in the lasting rocks. ‘ But 
regard the world as it now is. Say, if you please, 
that all animal forms have been developed by force 
of inherent laws from a single animated germ. How 
came that germ? It could not have been derived 
from the vegetable world. There is a gulf between 
the two which must be bridged by a miracle. Sup- 
pose we overlook that miracle and ascend through 
the various forms of vegetable life to a primal vegeta- 
ble cell, from which all living nature has evolved 
itself. How came that vital cell? Here is another 
gulf which nothing but a miracle can bridge. Let 
us ignore this, and suppose that, somehow, it sprung 
from inorganic matter; that life leaped out of death. 
How came the world, on which it is planted, organ- 
ized, garnished, illuminated, warmed? What gave 
_ character and weight to atoms, and order to the 
families of material cohesion? Between the universe 
and chaos is another chasm which must be bridged 
by a miracle. The Divine, then, must somewhere 
break through the chain of causes and effects. If so, 
who shall blasphemously seek to exclude him from 
the circle or say, “ //ztherto shalt thou come, and no 
further?” As God has modified the established order 
of things in the past, there is reason to suppose he is 
doing so in the present. Direct your eye outward, 
beyond the solar system, and the nebulz which 
belong to it, to those remoter nebulz that float like 
separate universes in the outer depths; buried so 


285 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


deep in space that light, traveling twelve millions of 
miles a minute, would not reach our earth from 
thence in fifty thousand years; some of them mani- 
festing no signs of resolvability under the most favor- 
ble circumstances and most rigorous tests of science. 
Have we not reason to suppose that new planets are 
there evolving from their centers? Suppose they 
issue from their furnaces and enter on their paths, 
by force of ordinary law; must not some creative 
energy be put forth to clothe their valleys with green 
and render them vocal with song? How are the 
eighteen elements which enter into the plant or 
animal to be selected, gathered, brought together in 
the exact proportions necessary and then molded into 
organs and systems, and animated with life? Surely 
we need more than the laws of the zzorganic world. 

II. Miracles are probable. 

a. There is a natural necessity for them. As 
we have reason to believe that God has modified 
established order in the past and present, so have 
we reason to suppose that he will in the future. 
According to laws as well settled as that by which a 
stone thrown into the air will come down, the moon 
is drawing nearer to the earth and must soon meet 
it, breaking up the crust of the globe by the shock, 
generating intense heat by the destruction of its mo- 
tion and fusing both in to one molten mass. By 
the same process, the earth and attendant planets are 
winding inward to fall into the furnace of the sun, 
and the suns themselves with their planetary sys- 
tems are coming together into a common globe, 
which, though intensely hot at first, will gradually 


MIRACLES. 287 


cool, When the temperature of nine hundred and™ 
ninety-seven degrees in the downward progress is 
reached, all physical energy will cease, light, heat. 
and electricity will be equally diffused, all change 
become impossible, darkness and death will he uni- 
versal, and chaos be restored. What then? Shall the 
universe stagnate forever? Surely he can not think 
so, who believes in God. No; the Creator will then 
come forth; at his voice there will be a resurrection, 
a reconstruction, a restoration of the order of things. 
But why not break the order to arrest the progress to * 
destruction, rather than after it has taken place? 
What do you gain for physical science by putting off 
the omnific mandate to the close? And if you allow 
interference with material law, to save a material 
universe, why not to save a moral one? How much 
superior one man to all stellar worlds! As Pascal 
has justly said: “ Man is but a reed, the weakest in 
nature; but he is a thinking reed. It is not neces- 
sary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him. 
A breath’of air, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. 
But were the universe to crush him, man would still 
be more noble than that which kills him, because he 
knows that he dies, and the universe knows nothing 
of the advantage it has over him.” 

“Behold this midnight glory: worlds on worlds ! 

Amazing pomp! Redouble this amaze ; 

Ten thousand add; add twice ten thousand more ; 

Then weigh the whole,—one soul outweighs them all, 


And calls th’ astonishing magnificence 
Of unintelligent creation poor.” * 


*“ Young’s Night Thoughts,” vii, 994. 


288 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


6. There is a moral necessity for them. Miracles, 
in the theological sense, are more than Strauss as- 
sumes ; and yet, in this superior sense, they are prob- 
able. A revelation from God implies them. Faith 
requires evidence, and the kind of evidence is to be 
determined by the matter to be proved; for a proposi- 
tion and its proof must be homogeneous. As moral 
truth requires moral evidence, algebraic truth an 
algebraic process, mathematical truth a mathematical 
demonstration, so supernatural truth requires super- 
natural attestation. When Jesus said, “If I had not 
done among them the works which no other man did, 
they had not had sin;”* that is, they would have 
been excused for rejecting him; and when Nico- 
demus said, “ We know that thou art a teacher come 
from God; for no man can do these miracles that 
thou doest, except God be with him,’ t—they ex- 
pressed the general conviction of mankind, that 
miracles are the proper and indispensable proofs of 
revelation. Since, therefore, a revelation can be 
proved in no other way than by miracles, there is a 
probability in their favor measurable by the evidence 
that man needs further moral and religious light than 
nature affords. 

c. There is a fitness in them. God has made the 
human mind with a tendency to believe in things 
supernatural. All ages and nations have so believed. 
Hence the saying of Plutarch, “As well build a city 
in the air, as without belief in the gods.” This be- 
lief is not confined to the lower orders. Socrates, 
greatest among the ancients ; Bacon, greatest among 

* John xv, 24. t John iii, 2. 


MIRACLES. 289 


the moderns; Herbert, first among philosophical 
skeptics; Wesley, first among emotional preachers,— 
had it in equal degree. The theory that, as mankind 
advances in knowledge, it diminishes until, finally, it 
ceases, is untenable. The present age is by no 
means emancipated from it, even in the most en- 
lightened states. Though we have disenchanted por- 
tents and wonders, and earthquakes and meteors 
and simoons; and _ banished witchcraft and magic, 
and sorcery and necromancy and ghosts; we have 
not even weakened the popular faith in the super- 
natural, or in its influence upon the natural. Even 
they who shake off their religious faith usually adopt 
another no less supernatural. Spiritualism follows in 
the wake of skepticism. He who was once high- 
priest of materialism in America is now high-priest 
of spiritualism in America. Can you arrest this 
tendency with the laboratory? As well attempt to 
destroy the atmosphere with an air-pump. As we 
might argue the existence of light from the structure 
of the eye, so may we argue the probability of mira- 
cles from the universal belief in miraculous mani- 
festations. The mind is as substantial a part of — 
human nature as the body, and as sound a basis of 
reasoning. 

d. There is an analogy for miracles. Every-where 
we see subordination of one law to a higher. The 
animal pumps up blood in defiance of gravitation ; it 
appropriates elements and molds them into combina- 
tions unknown in inorganic spheres; the mind sub- 
ordinates the vital laws. Thus we see successive 
layers of laws, as wheels within wheels in the proph- 


290 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


et’s vision; the lower subjected to the higher; the 
vital subordinating the physical; the mental, both, 
Why not a higher force subjecting all, if need be, for 
higher ends? Surely, this is not incredible to men 
who see, in the ascending series of being, the uprising 
of a Supreme Power, and feel coming down from all 
the depths, and through all the openings, and over 
all the walls, of the universe, the influence of a heart 
that speaks to our own. 

é. The objections to miracles are easily answered. 
' Say not that the world, being established under God’s 


laws, needs no interference. So far as God is con- . 


cerned, this may be; but man, created in God’s image, 
rational and free, has, by sin, broken in upon the 
moral order established by infinite wisdom, and thus 
given occasion for miracle; even demanded it. The 
whole creation groaneth in pain together until now, 
for the miracle of redemption. When a surgeon 
brings together the fragments of a broken limb, does 
he interfere with established law? 

Nor are we to, suppose that miracles are incredible 
because incomprehensible. A clergyman asked one 
who would not believe what he could not compre- 
hend, why the horns of one cow turn in and those of 
another turn out. The skeptic was confounded. The 
clergyman might have taken his antagonist upward 
from the horns of the cow to those of the moon, 
thence to the most distant star in the milky way, or 
downward, from the horns of the cow to those of the 
snail, and from the horns of the snail to the smallest in- 
sect that hums in the morning air, without finding any 
thing comprehensible to human mind. “It is incom- 


| 
/ 


MIRACLLS: 291 


prehensible that God is, and incomprehensible that 
he is not; that the soul is in the body, that we have 
no soul; that the world is created, that it is not 
created.” And shall man, “this mean between noth- 
ing and all,” to whom the end of things and their 
principle are inevitably and impenetrably concealed, 
“equally incapable of seeing the nothingness whence 
he is derived and the infinity in which he is swallowed 
up,’—shall man dare to say, as he trembles between 
eternities and infinities: “There is matter, attraction, 
impulse; beyond that, nothing. There are plants, an- 
imals, man; beyond him, nothing. There is mind, 
thought, law; beyond, nothing,—because I can not 
comprehend it?’ O, folly! O, presumption! 

III. Miracles are provable. Hume has said, and - 
his argument is often repeated, that a miracle being 
contrary to experience, is not provable by testimony ; 
since it is more reasonable to suppose that testimony 
is false than that a miracle is true. The sophism is 
full of ambiguities. It is sufficient to notice one. It 
is in the word Zestzmony, which may mean either tes- 
timony in the abstract, or a particular testimony. If 
the word be used in the former sense, the premise is 
true, but the argument is void; for it is not by tes- 
timony in the abstract, but by a particular kind of tes- 
timony that miracles are established. To put the 
fallacy in syllogistic form: Testimony—according to 
experience—may be fallacious. The Gospel is testi- 
mony; therefore, the Gospel—according to experi- 
ence—may be fallacious. The first premise is an 
indefinite proposition; put a@//, the universal sign, 
before it, and you have valid reasoning, but a false 


—_ 


292 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


premise; for it is not true that a@// testimony is falla- 
cious; though testimony in general is, there is a 
species of it which at once excludes the idea of fraud 
on the one hand and delusion on the other—the very 
kind we have for the Christian miracles. Change the 
universal sign to the particular, and the premises are 
true, but the reasoning becomes invalid; for, in scien- 
tific language, you have an undistributed middle. To 
illustrate: Suppose you go into court with proof of 
your title to a particular estate, what would it avail 
for opposing counsel to say: This is testimony; there- 
fore, this is fallacious? You would reply: Grant that 
testimony in general is fallacious; it is incumbent on 
you, if you would defeat my claim to this estate, to 
show that the particular evidence on which it rests is 
fallacious. ; 

IV. The miracles of Christ are proved. The evi- 
dence is found in the Gospels. We assume their authen- 
ticity not only because it is proved in works accessible 
to all readers, but because it is admitted by both Rénan 
and Colenso, the representatives of the great skeptical 
schools of the age. This is enough; but as some are 
troubled because the canon was not settled until the 
Council of Carthage,* be it observed that this body 
did not create, it merely announced, the long-settled 
judgment of the Church. Since some are perplexed 
about the apocryphal books, mark that they were not 
contradictory, but complementary, of the canonical ; 
and, as many are disquieted because the works quot- 
ing the Scriptures of the New Testament are none 
earlier than the second century, it may be well to note 

* A? VD), 367: 


MIRACLES. 293 


that, in the latter part of the second century, Irenaeus 
quotes the four Gospels by name. He could not have 
been imposed on by any publication which Polycarp, 
Bishop of Smyrna, disowned. But Polycarp, born in 
the year of our Lord 80, was the contemporary and 
companion of both St. John and Irenzus, and must 
have known what works were received by John as the 
writings of the apostles. The four Gospels, then, 
must have been received by the Church of the first 
century—the apostolic age. 

The testimony of the Gospels is corroborated by 
an independent author—St. Paul, in his uncontested 
epistles. He asserts that Jesus appeared, after his 
resurrection, on six different occasions—to Cephas, to 
the twelve, to more than five hundred brethren at 
once, to James, to all the apostles, and to himself.* 
He gives the appearance of Christ to himself as a 
proof of his apostolic mission, and of his parity with 
the other apostles; and of course it must have been 
by sight, and not by conception or imagination, or the 
argument would have had no force. The whole life of 
the apostle, the grandest in history next to Christ’s, 
rests upon this fact. 

Is the testimony to the Savior’s miracles credible? 
The objections to it are two—its age and its inade- 
quacy. First. It is said to be subject to abatement 
from the lapse of time since it was given. But on 
what does the credibility of testimony depend? On 
the period of time when it was given, or on the ability, 
diligence, and honesty of the witnesses? If on the 
latter, then, as long as these characteristics can be 


*1 Cor. xv, 5-7. 


294 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


evinced, so long will the testimony be credible. I 
believe that Senorita Aldama was shot in the theater 
of Havana, but I believe more firmly that Czesar was 
stabbed in the senate house at Rome, although the 
former occurred only a few days since, and the latter 
nearly two thousand years ago. I believe that Grant 
took Richmond, and, with as firm a conviction, that 
Bonaparte crossed the Alps, Hannibal retreated from 
Italy, and Xerxes from Greece. Had Bonaparte not 
crossed the Alps, the current of history for the last 
ninety years would have been different. Had Hanni- 
bal invaded Italy with a different result than history 
records, Italian civilization would have been Punic. 
Had the Persians tritmphed at Marathon and Sala- 
mis, the civilization of Greece might have been Asi- 
atic. I read the Constitution of the United States 
to-day with as much faith as did the citizen of Phil- 
adelphia, when the ink was scarcely dry upon the 
parchment. I know that without this Constitution, 
the history and condition of the country can not be 
accounted for. The division, organization, and rela- 
tions of the States; the General Government, Con- 
gress, the President, the Supreme Court, all grow out 
of the Constitution. Suppose the Government to con- 
tinue a thousand years, would the Constitution be 
quoted with any less faith than it is to-day? The 
New Testament is the Constitution of the Church. 
Without this, how can you account for its origin, 
institutions, history, or for the history of Europe and 
the world? for it has shaped the course of science, 
and turned the hinges of empires. Where Gibbon 
has failed, we would better not try. Instead of truth’s 


MIRACLES. 295 


being absorbed as it descends the ages, it wears its 
channel deeper with the lapse of time. 

But, second, the evidence is said to be insufficient. 
It will not do to reject it because of our preposses- 
sions. To refuse to believe evidence because it con- 
flicts with our theory of natural laws, is inconsistent 
with that (Baconian) philosophy which infidels laud ; 
which lies at the basis of modern science; and whose 
primary principle is, that whatever is proved must be 
believed, any pre-conceived opinion to the contrary 
notwithstanding. Perceiving this inconsistency, the 
ablest skeptics of the day are compelled to admit that 
there is a kind of proof which would convince them 
of miracles. 

Let a man give out that, at a certain time and 
place, he will perform a miracle. Suppose that he will 
cause a body to rise contrary to the law of gravitation. 
Let a committee of distinguished philosophers be ap- 
pointed to witness it. Let them take all needful 
precautions, and exercise all needful scrutiny in its 
examination. If they certify that the miracle has 
been performed, it must be believed ; though, to re- 
move any lingering doubt, it should be repeated, 
somewhat varied.* Infidels may believe in such a 
miracle, not we. We believe in the uniformity of 
nature’s laws, though they are under the control of 
infinite wisdom, and may sometimes be violated for 
the sake of the natural or moral world. But, in the 
case described, there is no great end accomplished ; 
no new light thrown either upon science or morals ; 
no new encouragement given to the human heart; no 


* “Rénan’s Life of Jesus :” Introduction, p. 44. 


296 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


new strength imparted to human virtue; no opening 
made into the spiritual world; no communication of 
truth lying beyond the range of reason; no new era 
introduced,—a nine days’ wonder, and that is all. 
Now, we think either of the following supposi- 
_ tions—namely, that a deception has been practiced 
upon the senses of the committee, or that some new 
law has been discovered, the secret of which is with the 
performer—is more credible than that a law of nature 
has, at the bidding of a mere man, been suspended, 
Such a miracle is no more like our Savior’s, than a 
school-boy’s top is like the planet Jupiter. Indeed, 
it is not a miracle in the theological sense. In this 
sense, a miracle is a suspension, control, or reversal of 
a known law, by the act, assistance, or. permission of 
God, performed by a lofty character, and preceded by 
a notification that it is wrought to attest the authority 
of a divine messenger, or to authenticate a divine 
message, of great moral and permanent benefit to 
mankind. In the case supposed, five things are want- 
ing to constitute the miracle: 1. An ample notice ; 
2. An adequate power ; 3. A sufficient motive; Ak 
grand agent; 5. Important and permanent conse- 
quences. All these belong to the miracles of Christ. 
Mark first the pre-notification. It has sounded 
through the world and through the ages. This noti- 
fication is in a series of prophecies by Adam, Abra- 
ham, Jacob, Moses, David, Isaiah, etc., in which Christ 
is presented as the Shiloh, the Great Prophet, the 
Prince, the Deliverer, the Messiah ; also, in a series 
of types, as the scape-goat, passover, morning and 
evening sacrifice, in which he is exhibited as the 


MIRACLES. 207 


Lamb of God ; and, finally, in a series of typical char- 
acters, as Joshua, Joseph, David, in which he is fore- 
shown as he who is to save the world, and lead his 
people into eternity. He is predicted so minutely, 
that almost every incident of his life, from the man- 
ger to the tomb, is described ; so clearly, that, by an 
alteration of tenses, prophecy may, in many cases, be 
turned into biography; and so peculiarly, that in 
Christ only, of all the race, can the lines of Mes- 
sianic promise meet. He is to come during the 
fourth pagan monarchy, before the scepter departed 
from Judah, while the second temple was still stand- 
ing, and in the seventieth year of Daniel. These 
prophecies are held by the Jews, the enemies of Chris- 
tianity. They were interpreted of the Messiah by 
them until his coming, and were confirmed by their 
rejection of him when he came. They are harmonious 
in doctrine, precept, promise, and both complementary 
and illustrative of each other. They were translated 
into Greek, and read by the Gentiles, before the Chris- 
tian era. Many of their predictions have been clearly 
proved by Volney and other infidels, while none can 
be shown to have been falsified. They have been . 
examined as no other book; yet after enduring eight- 
een hundred years of intensest criticism, they shine. 
out more than ever. They have been hindered as no 
others, yet are they going forth in more lands than 
before, soon to be read in all the languages of the 
polyglossal world. They have been opposed as no 
other; for they oppose, as no other, the passions of 
man’s nature, and describe, as no other, the depth of . 
his depravity ; yet are they received by more men and 


298 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


nations now than ever before, and are prized by them 
as a general rule, in proportion to their intelligence 
and virtue. 

You point your telescope into space, and see a 
set of planets arranged in order, and wheeling in har- 
mony, at different distances around the sun. God 
alone, who pervades all space, can build such a system. 
Point, now, your telescope through past time, and you 
see a series of prophetic lights sphered around one 
great central orb, the truth that “ Jesus Christ came 
into the world to save sinners ;” they are at different 
distances, from the year 410 B.C. to the birth of man. 
First, the sixteen prophets, of different ages, nations, 
occupations, and locations ; then the Mosaic dispen- 
sation, with its apparatus of types and ceremonies, 
like Jupiter and his moons; then the patriarchal his- 
tory, with significant characters, altars, and sacrifices, 
like Saturn and its rings ; then Genesis, with its first 
promise in the garden, like the far-distant Neptune. 
Who but God, that pervades all time, can construct 
such a moral planetary system. To herald what being 
save Jesus Christ, was such a system ever constructed ? 
Such, then, is the pre-notification of his coming. 

Second. The cause of Christ's miracles is adequate. 
It is not the power of man, or angel, but of the Ai- 
mighty. They are ascribed to this agency, and are of 
such a character as to evince it. They occur ina 
series which baffle all attempts to confound them with 
false miracles; or to account for them on Paulus’s 
theory of natural explanations ; or on Strauss’s theory 
of myth; or on Bauer’s, of fundamental ideas; or on 
Rénan’s, of delusion. and imposture. Though the 


MIRACLES. 299 


science of the sea has deprived Neptune of his scepter, 
and that of the earth has stripped Ceres of her au- 
thority, and chased nymphs and dryads from woods 
and streams, and the philosophy of the universe has 
disenchanted eclipses and comets; no science or 
philosophy has discovered a method by which the 
blind may be made to see with a touch, or the dead 
be raised by the voice of the living. These miracles 
must be taken in connection. A chain that might 
moor a man-of-war could not, if its links were sepa- 
rated, hold a fishing-smack to her anchor. If you 
could find a mode of explaining each miracle sepa- 
rately, ascribing one to legerdemain, another to collu- 
sion, etc., it would by no means follow that you, could 
account for the whole series, without the supposition 
of supernatural power. Even if you could explain 
Christ’s natural miracles, his clear vision, which de- 
tected thoughts in the depths of the soul, and the 
stater in the mouth of the fish in the depths of the 
sea, and his prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem 
and of the future triumphs of his spiritual and uni- 
versal kingdom, would remain to attest his divinity. 
These, you perceive, are entirely different from a 
shrewd guess, or the prevision of human conscience, 
anticipating events by the grooves of Divine law in 
which they must needs run, or the foresight of polit- 
ical wisdom, which sometimes works wonderful solu-- 
tions from given data; for here there are no premises 
to go upon, no providential chord struck, whose vi- 
brations could be caught by the distant ear. 

Third. The miracles of Christ are called forth 


by a sufficient motive. They are wrought to verify 
26 


300 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


important truth lying beyond the range of the human 
reason; namely, the existence and relations of the 
spiritual and eternal world. 

That such truth is important to mankind must Be 
evident at once. It is truth after which the wisest 
of all ages have sought, as after hid treasures. With- 
out it, our civilization, which rests upon our religion, 
would fall through, and we should reach a depth of 
barbarism worse than that of pagan states; without 
it, our aspirations after goodness and truth and im- 
mortality would not be adequately sustained; with- 
out it, what would support us in the sorrows of life, 
sustain us in the struggles of virtue, animate us with 
brotherly love, gird us for sublime heroism, lead us 
forth in the enterprises of universal philanthropy, 
and cheer us as we pass through the valley of death? 
We grant that more or less of this truth has been 
enjoyed by heathen states ; but it has been imperfect 
and derived. 

That such truth lies beyond the range of the 
reason, is equaily clear. The laws of physical nature 
may be discovered. Matter is before us, visible, tan- 
gible; it can be experimented upon. We are under 
strong motives to study its laws. Their investigation 
is a salutary discipline of mind. But the spiritual 
world lies beyond our ken. No reasoning, no ex- 
perimenting, no mental introversion, can give us any 
knowledge of it. Reason, by her wisest son, Soc- 
rates, has confessed the necessity of a Divine mes- 
senger to give it. Without asserting that it is not, 
either in whole or in part, discoverable by reason, we 
know that, as a matter of -fact, the world by wisdom 


MIRACLES. RE 


does not discover it. God’s natural attributes may 
indeed be traced in his works, and glimpses of his 
moral attributes may be obtained from his _provi- 
dences; but what man, unaided by revelation, has 
ever reasoned himself up to the unity, spirituality, 
and holiness of God, or found out by nature the 
scheme of redemption? 

Modern philosophers—of whom Carlyle is an ex- 
ample—sometimes tell us that they have a revela- 
tion within themselves, that their God-created souls 
are Mt. Sinai’s, and that thunder all round the heav- 
ens could not make God’s law more Godlike to them. 
But why are not the God-created souls of the sav- 
ages Mt. Sinai’s also? The difference between the 
philosopher’s God-created soul and the cannibal’s 
equally God-created one is not by internal, but by 
external, revelation. Moreover, if the inner light 
were enough for human guidance, whence the con- 
fusion concerning moral truth, the general depravity 
of man, and the universal craving for a revelation, 
which the oracles and altars of all ages attest? 

We honor natural reason within her legitimate 
domain. With all due respect to natural ethics and 
religion, we say that they are unsatisfactory without 
the aid of faith to complement and confirm their 
conclusions. Instinct is perfect; reason is progress- 
ive. But where reason has not drawn from faith, 
what progress has it made in morals since the 
creation of man? It is a mistake to suppose that 
a sacred nation, in an obscure corner of the world, 
guarded in seclusion the deposit of the truth. Both 
before and after Messiah, the Divine light was 


302 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


diffused. Why is it that beyond the circle of the 
Church’s influence, infanticide, polygamy, slavery, 
prevail, without private remorse or public condemna- 
tion? Although the codes which have presided over 
the public and private life of modern civilized states 
have not been formed in synods, yet the principles 
on which they rest, though they do not exceed 
reason, are derived from revelation. 

The history of Europe for three centuries has not 
been the mere progress of the secular spirit, but its ad- 
vance under revelation as its pillar of cloud and fire. 

Let not him, who can not obtain the knowledge 
necessary to guide him through this world without a 
teacher sent from man, be ashamed to find his way 
to the next by a teacher sent from God. 

Fourth. The miracles of Christ are performed by 
a miraculous agent. He comes forth at a remarka- 
_ble period of preparation and watching for-a de- 
‘liverer. The Greek language had been diffused, and 
the Roman arms carried in triumph through the 
world. The dying Jew said, “Bury me with my 
Shoes on and my staff in hand, that I may be ready 
to meet Messiah when he cometh.” The living 
one tuned his harp to sing of his approach; the 
sweetest lyre of the pagan world echoed Isaiah’s 
strains.* 

His character is peculiar; a mingled lion and 
lamb, and both transcendent. His words of wisdom 
and works of charity; his spirit of blended meekness 
and majesty; his life of perfect purity and match- 
less energy; of pillowless poverty and unsearchable 


* Virgil: Eclogue iv. 


MIRACLES. 303 


riches; of patient suffering and godlike action; of 
weeping with man and standing with God; of mov- 
ing in the lowest social state, and rising infinitely 
above the highest; of swaying the scepter of mercy, 
and wielding the sword of justice; of opening at 
once the gates of heaven and the mouth of hell; of 
subordinating even superhuman wisdom and power to 
the ends of love, and eclipsing them both by its tran- 
scendent luster; of renouncing the world, yet found- 
ing for himself a spiritual kingdom, embracing all the 
nations and the ages—is unlike all else ever known on 
earth, conceived by philosophy, or celebrated in art or 
song. 

His revelation is unique. What is its primal, cen- 
tral, final, comprehensive truth, which flashes from all 
prophecies, blazes from all altars, and beams from all 
miracles? “God so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life.’ Look 
downward over this green earth, the footstool of 
God; look inward upon your own soul, the image of 
God; look upward into this blue sky, the throne 
of God; listen to its utterances, as they come down 
through spaces unmeasured and ages unnumbered, 
and say whether this message is not worthy of thine 
almighty Father! But sound all history, and you 
find nothing like it. 

His method is divine. His words have the charm 
of antiquity with the freshness of yesterday; the 
simplicity of a child with the wisdom of God; the 
softness of kisses from the lip of love, and the force- 
of the lightning rending the tower. His parables 


304 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


are like groups of matchless statuary; his prayers 
like an organ-peal floating round the world and 
down the ages, echoed by the mountain-peaks and 
plains into rich and varied melody, in which all 
devout hearts find their noblest feelings at once 
expressed, sustained, refined. His truths are self- 
evidencing. They fall into the soul as seed into the 
ground, to rest and germinate. He speaks, and all 
nature and life become vocal with theology. The 
mustard-seed and the mountain, the prodigal and the 
parent, the sparrow on the wing and the lily of the 
field, are still his unconscious ministers. 

His errand is divine. We are not what we ought 
to be. Sin interposes between us and God. Evil 
tendencies and painful apprehensions, against which 
we struggle in vain, seize us; so that, to the awakened 
soul, life is a burden and death a terror. Christ comes, 
the only being in all history that even assumes to be 
an adequate and universal deliverer. Opposed by the 
carnal heart, he is yet the desire of all nations. Cov- 
ered with contempt and scorn, he nevertheless finds 
his way to kings’ palaces. ‘Though sneered at by phi- 
losophy, he yet leads the princes of science as little 
children. All other great men are valued for their 
lives ; he, above all, for his death, around which mercy 
and truth, righteousness and peace, God and man, 
are reconciled; for the Cross is the magnet which 
sends the electric current through the telegraph be 
tween earth and heaven, and makes both Testaments 
thrill, through the ages of the past and future, with 
living, harmonious, and saving truth. Other men 
may be buried, and stay buried. Mankind can give 


MIRACLES. 305 


their noblest dead only a place in the cathedral’s 
crypt, a page in history, and silence and forgetfulness 
more and more profound as time rolls on. Napoleon, 
dying, said to Bertrand: “I shall soon be in my grave. 
Such is the fate of the Alexanders and Caesars. I 
shall be forgotten; and the Marengo conqueror and 
emperor will be a college theme. I die before my 
time ; and my dead body must return to the earth, 
and be food for worms. Behold the destiny, near at 
hand, of him who has always been called the great 
Napoleon! What an abyss between my great misery 
and the eternal reign of Christ, who is proclaimed, 
loved, adored, and whose kingdom is extending over 
all the earth.” Well might the great conqueror say 
so. But the world can not bury Christ. The earth 
is not deep enough for his tomb, the clouds are not 
wide enough for his winding-sheet ; he ascends into 
the heavens, but the heavens can not contain him. 
He still lives—in the Church which burns uncon- 
sumed ‘with his love; in the truth which reflects his 
image; in the hearts which burn as he talks with 
them by the way. There are suns so distant that, if 
they were blotted out to-day, the world would be 
thirty thousand years in ascertaining the fact. Prac- 
tically, so far as the world is concerned, they would 
still exist. So with Christ, Sun of righteousness: 
he still shines; so that if we were not certified of 
his death, we might suppose, from the calls upon his 
name, the anthems in his praise, and the fruits of his 
Spirit with which the Church is blessed, that he is 
still on earth. And so he is. He is here to-day. 
Wherever the s»ldier bows in his tent, or the sailor on 


306 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


his deck; wherever the saint seeks grace, or the phi- 
lanthropist help; wherever the orphan lifts up his 
cry, or the widow raises her despairing eyes, or the 
father weeps over his dying child, or the heart breaks © 
under the weight of its sins, and calls on Jesus, he is 
there; there with the sympathies of man and the 
attributes of God; there to forgive sin, to fold the 
lamb, to purify the soul, and to lead the departing - 
spirit in his own image to the skies; and every re- 
volving day widens the sphere of mind over which 
his scepter sways and his blessing falls. 

Vain to call this character a myth. It were easier 
for a rude peasant, without genius or geometry, or 
knowledge of artists or works of art, to produce the 
grandest historical painting, than for the fishermen of 
Galilee to draw the picture of our Lord. As Rousseau 
has shown, the myth would be as great a miracle as 
the reality. The line of cause and effect must be 
broken to produce the picture; why not to produce 
the reality, and to group around the reality miracu- 
lous acts? 

Fifth. The miracles of Christ have produced won- 
derful and permanent results. The Church, in its 
origin, spread, present prosperity, and prospective 
triumphs, is miraculous. By preaching Jesus and the 
resurrection, it changed the religion of the world. It 
had no social or physical force; no civil or intellectual 
authority ; no other element but the moral and mir- 
aculous. It has not lost its power. It still opens 
blind eyes, unstops deaf ears, cleanses lepers, makes 
the Ethiopian white, changes the lion to a lamb, and 
taises the dead; not, indeed, physically, but morally. 


MIRACLES. 307 


It constitutes the coast and cascade ranges of the 
moral world, condensing upon their summits the 
clouds of spiritual blessing, and inclosing the only 
valley of earth through which crystal streams me- 
ander among green pastures to the city of God. 
Beyond, on one side, are the arid sands of idolatry ; 
on the other, the stormy ocean of unbelief. We may 
find objections to it, as we may to nature when we 
look into the recesses of the rocks for the snake, or 
the depths of the forest for the bear; but when we 
stand upon Mt. Zion, as when we stand upon Mt. 
Hood, to survey the whole landscape, we see on all 
its outlines the hand of the Almighty. 

Now, to sum up and, show how these five facts 
bear upon the argument, let me suppose acase. Were 
you to tell me that a carpenter in Brooklyn had risen 
from the grave the third day after his interment, I 
should give no heed to your tale, but let it pass as the 
idle wind. Bring before me twelve men, of unim- 
peachable character and good sense, who make oath . 
to the fact, I should think them deceived. Prove that 
they could not be mistaken; that they knew the car- 
penter well; were with him when he died, heard his 
last words, and saw his breath depart; that after his 
death they stood by while the surgeons opened his 
breast and examined his heart and lungs; that after 
his resurrection, they had talked with him, eaten with 
him, and put their hands into his open side. I might 
suppose they had taken a strong conception for an 
object of sight. Show that, instead of expecting such 
a vision, they were disheartened after his death; that 


te had subsequently appeared to different parties, at 
27 


308 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


different times, and, on one occasion, to five hundred 
and more at once—I might think there was an anom- 
alous mental epidemic prevailing. Prove that, al- 
though the proclamation of this truth was upsetting 
the civil government and the religion of the world, 
and charging a damning crime upon the Supreme 
Court, the body of the carpenter, which, if brought 
from the tomb where his enemies had sealed it, 
would have vindicated the Court, saved the nation, 
and forever silenced the witnesses, was never pro- 
duced,—I might then suppose that the witnesses had 
themselves concealed the body, and were dishonest. 
Prove that for their testimony they had suffered the 
loss of goods, reputation, office, and that they were 
engaged in proclaiming this miracle in pain, privation, 
and persecution. Lead them out before a platoon of 
soldiers, and read them an order from government 
that if they persisted in their testimony they should 
every one be shot. If, while the bullets were speed- 
ing to their mark, they should joyfully renew the 
statement, I should be in a quandary. Mind has its 
Jaws as well as matter. It is contrary to physical 
law that a dead man should come to life and burst 
from the grave; it is equally inconsistent with mental 
Jaws that human mind should burst from motive in- 
fluence, and reverse its mode of action. Here, then, 
I should have, on the one hand, a physical miracle, 
on the other, a moral one. Which I should choose, I 
wot not; perhaps the latter. Add another circum- 
stance—namely, that the resurrection was announced 
beforehand as a work of God, in attestation of an 
indispensable revelation to mankind—and the balance 


MIRACLES. 309 


would incline in favor of the natural miracle. At this 
point, prove that the carpenter was more than a car- 
penter; a great, a popular, a blameless, an effective 
retormer; a miraculous being; the antitype of a long 
line of types, and the subject of prophetic song in all 
past ages, my doubts would be dissipated, and I 
should cry: 


“ All hail, the power of Jesus’ name ! 
Let angels prostrate fall ; 
Bring forth the royal diadem, 
And crown him Lord of all.” 


We believe more firmly than the skeptic in the 
uniformity of natural law, and reject more promptly 
those reports of isolated miracles performed at tombs, 
or at the bidding of mendicants or mountebanks, and 
which excite only the wonder of gaping multitudes, 
or the curiosity of prying historians. But we believe 
in a moral as well as a physical world, and in a super- 
natural series of events running athwart the natural 
laws, to verify a revelation for the instruction and 
salvation of the world—not so much contrary to nat- 
ural laws, as according to higher laws in a loftier 
plane and for a nobler purpose. The miracles of 
Christ are but parts of a conglomerate miracle, of 
which the Jewish dispensation and the Christian, the’ 
Bible and the Church, the character of the Messiah, 
and the doctrines, precepts, power, and results of the 
faith, are all elements,—elements which we see and 
handle; which enter into practical life and human ex- 
perience; which run through history, and modify na- 
ture, whose laws, physiological, mental, and moral, are 
dovetailed to them. 


wn 


310 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


But it may be said, “You have only proved the 
miracles of Christ, leaving those of the Old Testa- 
ment untouched.” That phase of infidelity which 
accepts Christ and rejects Moses is the most absurd ; 
for it accepts the major and rejects the minor included 
in it. Christ quotes the books of the Old Testament 
as of Divine authority. Grant that he is divine, and 
you must let us regard them so too. It is Christ that 
says, “If ye believe not Moses and the prophets, 
neither would ye believe though one rose from the 
dead.” 

The language with which a French philosopher, 
Pascal, closes one of his expostulations, I trust I may 
adopt in closing this. 

Whether this argument pleases you, and appears 
strong or not, “know that it proceeds from one who, 
both before and after it, fell on his knees before that 
Infinite and Invisible Being to whom he has subjected 
his whole soul, to pray that he would also subject you, 
for your good and his glory; and that thus Omnipo- 
tence might give efficacy to his feebleness.” 


XII. 


OBJECTIONS TO THE CROSS. 


S the doctrine of the Cross is the center of the 

Christian faith, infidels in all ages have concen- 
trated their energies against it. The objections which 
they have made have assumed different phases in dif- 
ferent ages and social states ; but they are essentially 
the same. Although they have all been answered 
often and well, yet as they put on new forms, the 
answers may be permitted to do so also. We will 
notice some of the phases they now present, which, - 
indeed, are nearly their ancient ones. They may be 
arranged under two divisions—the objections of phi- 
losophy, and those of Judaism. Philosophy, aim- 
ing to renovate the world by its own teachings, and 
denying the necessity of any atonement, looks upon 
a young man dying for the world as foolishness. 
Judaism, admitting that there must be a Messiah, 
but expecting him to come as a temporal prince, re- 
gards Calvary as a paradox or stumbling-block. 

I. The objections of infidel philosophy to the 
Cross may be grouped under three heads, as they 
relate either to its sufferer, its object, or its author. 

As respects the sufferer, philosophy objects to 
the Cross, 


a Because it is mysterious. But so are all things. 
311 


312 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


Science, instead of removing mysteries, only multi- 
plies them. For example, why has a given salt cer- 
tain properties? By analysis you show that it is 
composed of an acid and a base; by further analysis 
you demonstrate that the base is composed of oxy- 
gen and a metal, and the acid also; but you have not 
solved the original problem, only made additional 
ones ; and if you can prove that the various proper- 
ties of the compound are owing to differences in 
molecular arrangement, and the various affinities to 
electrical attraction and repulsion, you still further 
multiply the problems to be solved. What binds 
together the base and the acid, the metal and the 
oxygen, the electricity and the elements ; and what is 
affinity, what electricity, etc.? 

You believe in God; you believe in nature; but 
what connects the matter of the universe with the 
almighty Mind? If you can not explain how the 
connection of God with matter originates and sustains 
natural life, why wonder that you can not explain how 
the connection of Christ with mind originates and 
sustains spiritual life ? 

6. Kindred to this is the objection that the Cross is 
miraculous. But belief in the miraculous prevails in 
all ages and nations, and lies at the foundation of all 
religions ; nor can the severity of mathematics or the 
inductive method of modern science escape it; nor can 
even atheism relieve itself of the fears, the apprehen- 
sions, the surprises that imply it. Man can not be- 
lieve that he is either fatherless or forsaken. He 
looks beyond the visible sphere for a Creator, and be- 
yond the circle of natural laws for a guide. Philoso- 


OBFECTIONS TO THE CROSS. 313 


phy herself, made perfect in Plato, bemoans the scales 
upon her eyeballs, and proclaims the necessity of an 
interposition from on high to remove them. Faith in 
the miraculous, too, usually embodies itself either in 
an apotheosis or a theophany—a deification of hu- 
manity, as in Olympus, or an incarnation of deity, as 
in Buddhism. Man can not realize God in the infinite 
depths. We may see him abstractly, through earth 
and heaven; but the vision lacks body and warmth. 
It is the invisible and distant King, not the visible and 
loving Father. Hence, man craves an incarnation ; 
and the majority of the human race, now as ever, 
inside and outside the Church, de/zeve in it. If it be 
not a revelation, it must be either an intuition ora 
conclusion of the general reason, or the voice of 
the parent families of mankind speaking through 
tradition. 

c. An objection of a similar kind is that the Cross 
implies a contradiction. Thus it implies the Divinity 
of Christ, and this the Trinity; and the Trinity is 
self-contradictory. But the Church holds the doctrine 
in no sense which involves.a contradiction.. She is 
unitarian, holding that there is but one God. She is 
vationalistic, so far as to assert that the teachings of 
Scripture harmonize with those of reason. What then 
is the doctrine of the Trinity? Three persons in one 
God. What is the meaning of person? Suppose I 
do not know any more than I know what God is? 
Can we believe a proposition of which we know not 
the meaning of the terms? Certainly. A blind man 
may know neither what silver is, nor white is; and 
yet may have satisfactory evidence that silver is 


314 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


white. Observe, however, that while a proposition 
can be proved to him who is ignorant of its terms, its 
contradictory can not be shown by the same party. 
_ Hence, the skeptic, who knows neither what God is, 
nor tri-personality, can never show that the latter 
may not be affirmed of the former. That the doctrine 
is above reason, is what we might expect, since God 
is not accustomed to reveal what man is able to 
discover. 

2. We have spoken of some of the objections of 
philosophy against the doctrine of the Cross which 
relate to the victim; let us now refer to some which 
relate to the odject—man. In this regard skeptical 
philosophy objects to the Cross: 

a. Because it assumes man’s degradation and help- 
lessness. “ Horrible doctrine!” cries the philosopher ; 
“a terror to man, a libel upon God. Preach it on hang- 
man’s day; reserve it for slaves.” The doctrine thus 
denounced is an exaggeration. The fall does not im- 
ply that every man is as wicked as he caz be, or that 
all are egually wicked, or that any man inherits a post- 
tive principle of evil, or is left without an index to 
good, or an impulse toward it, but that, from negative 
causes, men are naturally inclined to evil. Thus un- 
derstood, the doctrine is open to observation, matter 
of experience, illustrated by all history, painted by all 
poetry. It is the just remark of Coleridge that, with 
the assertion of evil, Grecian mythology rose and set, 
It runs through all mythology, and is implied in all 
philosophy too. Whether you assert the innate per- 
versity of matter, or the existence of an evil deity as 
well as a good’ one, or consider the present life a 


OBJECTIONS TO THE CROSS. 315 


prison, in which we suffer for the sins of a prior one, 
you admit the fall. In vain do you seek to solve the 
problem of moral evil by education and example ; if 
they be universally bad, they imply universal de- ~ 
pravity; if not, they can not account for ‘he facts. 
Vain to solve it by priestcraft or government, for de- 
pravity is most intense in atheism and anarchy. Ac- 
customed as we are to sin, we shudder at its daily 
developments. What would an angel think could he 
take our post of observation? Should the concealed 
depravity of this city during the passing day be 
brought out, who could endure the sight? What 
must be the panorama of the world’s iniquity to the 
all-seeing Eye? But we retort upon the objector, 
He it is that discourages humanity and dishonors its 
Author. Pointing to man prostrate, stripped, bleed- 
ing, he says, “This is his natural condition ;” and 
passes on, Christianity cries “ No, here is wrong and 
ruin; man has fallen among thieves;”’ and, bending 
over him, she pours oil and wine upon his wounds, 
raises, restores, and endows him. 

6. Again it objects, because the Cross presents man 
in a state of probation and peril. God is, indeed, a 
loving parent, but also a righteous ruler, as incapable 
of emancipating a soul from the claims of justice as 
of delivering a planet from the law of gravitation. 
That sin is followed by misery, is matter of experi- 
ence; that, sooner or later, misery will be in propor- 
tion to guilt, is a reasonable expectation ; that if there 
be a future state, we shall enter it with the same char- 
acter and impulses wherewith we leave the present, is 
according to analogy (for there is nothing in death, 


316 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


any more than in sleep, to change the spiritual na- 
ture) ; that if we enter the next world with sinful pro- 
pensities, and find there the same laws as here, we 
must suffer, is indisputable. 

Set before you the inveterate drunkard. Mark his 
blood-shot eye, his bloated body, his trembling limbs, 
his blasted intellect, his ruined fortune, his lost char- 
acter, his horrid oaths, his remorseful conscience ; add 
eternity to this image, and you may know what it is 
to be damned. It is easy, therefore, to conceive of 
perdition —difficult to avoid conceiving it. There 
need be no infernal fires, nor bottomless pit, nor eter- 
nal worm. Hell may be the necessary sequel, the 
natural outflow, of earth, whose active volcanoes of sin 
send forth rivers of moral fire sufficient to fill a pit 
that all those Scriptural figures can not adequately 
paint. 

c. Philosophy objects to the Cross, also, from an op- 
posite view—because it supposes man can violate law 
without suffering its penalty. We must distinguish 
between the laws of inanimate nature and those of 
animated. When a river is displaced by an eruption, 
or a continent is depressed, or a planet is broken into 
asteroids, the ruin remains; there are no cross laws to 
repair it. Not so in living nature; there are here pro- 
visions of mercy—with every poison an antidote, for 
every disease a remedy, and through every vein a vis 
medicatrix, a restorative power; and these arrange- 
ments multiply as we rise in the scale of being. He 
who, when he planted the foundations of the earth, laid 
up in the mountains gold for our coin, and coal for our 
furnaces, and iron for our plows ; he who has pro- 


a 


OBFECTIONS TO THE CROSS. 317 


vided opium for disordered brains, quinine for ague, 
and vaccine virus against small-pox; he who has pre- 
scribed example, instruction, and authority to cure our 
ignorance, and migration, colonization, and commerce 
to heal our social and political maladies; he who 
teaches the ant to lay up its meat, and the stork to 
know the time of his coming,—may be supposed to 
have made some provision for the salvation of our 
fallen spirits, more especially since there is no reason 
to suppose they can redeem themselves. Every groan 
and tear and struggle of the soul against sin and 
death and hell, is an unconscious prophecy of a de- 
liverer. “For the creature [man] was made subject 
to vanity [corruption and decay], not willingly, but 
by reason of him who hath subjected the same in 
hope, because the creature itself also shall be delivered 
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious lib- 
erty of the children of God. For we know that the 
whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until 
now.” The whole human race, pregnant with immor- 
tality, groans to be delivered. It is, therefore, in con- 
formity with reason that Scripture informs us of a 
redemption provided for us. By whom? Nota mere 
man, nor even an angel, else the chasm between earth 
and heaven might drive us to despair. But “God so 
loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life.” 

3. We have spoken of the objections of philoso- 
phy to the doctrine of Christ crucified, as respects 
the victim and the object; let us now glance at some 
which respect the author. 


318 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


a. Philosophy objects that if God were to redeem 
the world, he would do so as he made it—by a word. 
Mark, however: God governs by /aws, one of which 
is instrumentality. He confers life through parents; 
he opens the blind eye by the surgeon’s knife; he 
bursts the bars of imprisoned innocence by lawyers 
and judges; he places the pillow beneath the suf- 
ferer’s head by the hand of a friend; he trains and 
illuminates the understanding by tutors and gov- 
ernors. When he broke up the dynasties of ancient 
Asia, he did it nét by earthquake, but by Alex- 
ander. When he broke down the dynasties of mod- 
ern Europe, he did it not by miracle, but by Na- 
poleon. When he determined to crush the dynas- 
ties of sin, and bring in everlasting righteousness, 
he, according to the analogies of his providence, raised 
up Christ. 

6. Philosophy objects that if God were to redeem 
the world, he would do it instantaneously ; but an- 
other of his laws is that of gradual development. 
He does not make even a mustard-seed at once. 
The tree must put forth first the bud, then the blos- 
som, then the fruit, which slowly matures through 
seed-time and harvest into fullness and ripeness. So 
if an event is to be brought about, even though it 
be but the burning of a frigate, it must have a long 
line of antecedents. We learn from the revelation 
of the rocks that it was by successive epochs, each 
extending through millions of years, that God, by 
means of the destruction of old species and the 
creation of new, and the molding influence of silent, 
slow, and unseen agencies, brought the earth into that 


OBFECTIONS TO THE CROSS. 319 


condition in which it was fit for the going forth of 
man. Thus, too, by successive moral epochs, afford- 
ing time for Judea to weave for Christ a garment 
of prophetic light, and Greece to cast a beautiful 
medium for his words, and Rome to tramp a high- 
way for his messengers, he prepared the way for the 
going forth of man’s Redeemer. But now that he 
has come, should not his light be universally dif- 
fused? Go ask truth—mathematical, philosphical, or 
moral—if it beams equally over all nations and all 
minds. Why wonder that Christ’s truth in the mind 
of the world should be as the leaven in the meal-tub ? 
To vindicate God’s administration, it is only needful 
to show three things: No man is accountable for 
light which he could not obtain; the death of Christ 
is equally efficacious in every age and nation, for with 
God he is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
world ; the faith which saves is equally effective in ali 
time, whether traveling by a line of types to a cross 
to be planted, or by a line of fulfilled predictions to a 
cross that has been planted. 

c. Philosophy objects because in the scheme of 
the Cross God charges guilt upon innocence, makes 
innocence suffer for guilt, and remits the due punish- 
ment of offense. The objection is founded upon a 
wrong view of redemption. Law consists of two 
2 parts, a precept and a penalty; the precept expresses 
the mind of the sovereign, the penalty the conse- 
quence of disobedience. The precept being violated, 
the penalty must either act or react. If it act, the 
subject suffers; if it react, the government suffers 
A parent gives a command to a child, and threatens 


320 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


a certain punishment if it be disregarded. The child 
disobeys; the-parent must either make the penalty 
act and the rebel suffer, or allow it to react and 


his government suffer; or, in consideration of some 


arrangement by which his government may be as 
well sustained as if the culprit endured the full pen- 
alty, he may grant a pardon. This would be the 
case if an intermediate party voluntarily endured the 
penalty. 

An ancient king once made a law against adultery, 
to which he annexed as penalty the extirpation of the 
offender’s eyes. The first criminal convicted under 
the law was the king’s son, and the case presented 
neither doubt nor palliation; the law must be en- 
forced, or the government must be given up. The 
king, moved with compassion, says, “Take one eye 
from my son’s head, the other from mine.” What is 
there wrong in this? Mark: it is not the king, but 
justice, stern and inflexible, over which the king has 
no power, that exacts the penalty, and love and vol- 
untary suffering that, in part, pays it. Do you say, 
“The cases are not parallel; let man repent and 


God forgive.” What government ever adopted such 


a principle? To pardon upon repentance were to 
remit all punishment; to remit all punishment were 
to give up all government; to give up all govern- 
were to tolerate disorder, withdraw the shield from 
innocence, put justice and injustice, charity and 
cruelty, upon equality, and allow hell to mingle with 
heaven. Consult providence. When the pugilist loses 
his eyes in fight, does repentance, though bitter and 


extended through all after life, restore the lost balls — 


— 


OBFYECTIONS TO THE CROSS. 321 


to their sockets? Nor will future obedience cancel 
sin, since our entire service is due. 

But why argue this point, since the general sense 
of mankind is against the supposition, as the altars 
of all ages attest by the blood that stains them? 
Nor can we invalidate this reasoning by saying that 
God is an absolute sovereign ; for he subjects himself 
to laws. If a man hold his arm in the fire, it will 
fry off, even though he be deranged and his family 
impoverished as a consequence. If a man have no 
premises, he can come to no rational conclusion. 
Men say this subjection to law is right; and some 
allege that God never wrought a physical or intel- 
lectual miracle, and that no proof can establish one ; 
yet they expect him to work a moral miracle in the 
case of every sinner. God does work miracles on 
the rare occasion of giving a revelation; but they 
are either physical or intellectual. Moses divides 
the sea; Joshua commands the sun; a prophet pierces 
futurity, and maps its distant scenes ; another prays 
the heavens into brass, and then into clouds; Christ 
opens the eye, cures the leper, stills the waves, 
wakes the dead, makes nature in all her wheels own 
the finger of her Maker; but when did Moses or 
Christ or apostle ever suspend a moral law? The 
reason is obvious: Physical and mental laws are 
arbitrary constitutions of the Creator; they may be 
suspended by a volition, and we may suppose will be, 
when a greater good will ensue from their suspension 
than from their operation. Not so with moral laws ; 
they are not arbitrary appointments, but grow neces- 
sarily out of zmmutable relations. To suspend them, 


322 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


God must violate justice, unsettle all moral harmony, 
strike a blow at his own throne, and render himself 
unworthy the worship of the universe. 

He must violate truth and love also. Justice says 
' to the sinner, “ Thou shalt die;” mercy says, “Thou 
Shalt not die.” Here is an irrepressible conflict. 
How shall there be an at-one-ment? Suppose one 
place himself stubbornly under a descending rock, 
the law of nature is that he shall be crushed. God 
“might suspend the law of gravitation without violat- 
ing his own attributes or the creature’s, as easily as 
an engineer could reverse his engine. But when 
man places himself beneath the avalanche of justice, 
God can not, without violating 2s nature or man’ s, 
arrest its descent. How can the rebel be saved? 
Christ assumes his nature, places himself at his side, 
and, made tall enough and strong enough by the in- 
dwelling Divinity, receives the descending mountain, 
and, though crushed himself, bears it from the head 
of guilty man, leaving him alive to the negotiations 
of mercy. | 

Mark: gwz/¢t is not assumed by the innocent suf- 
ferer, only the suffering due to it. And is it wrong 


for an innocent party to suffer for a guilty one? It 


is done almost daily in every home on earth. When 
voluntarily assumed, it is humanity’s highest grace, 
heroism’s brightest crown. The mythological char- 
acters that loom through the haze of the past, and 
the real characters that are destined to loom through 
the mists of the future, owe their epical grandeur to 
their voluntary and unselfish suffering. 

Mark, also: forgiveness does not follow until the 


~ 


OBJECTIONS TO THE CROSS. 323 


ends of justice are attained ; if it did not then, mercy — 
were clean gone forever. 

II. We have discussed the objections of philoso- 
phy to the Cross; let us notice those of Judaism. 
The Jewish mind was not speculative ; it believed in 
an invisible world, and in a connection of the visible 
with it; but having passed through the wilderness 
by cloud and fire, and received both the law amid 
thunder and lightning and the prophets amid miracu- 
lous demonstrations, it demanded szgvs from heaven. 
Messiah will descend a path paved with stars and 
arched with rainbows ; he will be preceded by celes- 
tial heralds and followed by heavenly hosts; received 
by assembled kings, and saluted by the artillery of 
both earth and skies. As Milton sings: 


“Vea, truth and justice then 
Will down return to men. 
Orbed in a rainbow, and like glories wearing, 
Mercy will sit between, 
Throned in celestial sheen, 
With radiant feet the tissued clouds downsteering ; 
And heaven, as at some festival, 
Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.” 


But man’s thoughts are not God’s. Whether such 
conceptions are reasonable, we may judge by the light 
of Providence. Is that the way in which God sends 
patriarchs, prophets, martyrs? Rather do they come 
through swaddling-bands or arks of bulrushes from 
the cottages of poverty—great nurse of heroes. 

Judaism objects, “If God send his Son, he will 
be universally known and honored.” She committed 
a double error in interpreting the prophecies, constru- 
ing literal passages peueuyen and figurative ones 

2 


324 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


literally ; for, as a general] rule, the prophecies treat 
the kingship of Christ metaphorically, the priesthood 
literally. Many in our own day commit the same 
error in looking for Christ’s second coming that the 
Jews did in looking for his first. Why expect Jesus 
to be universally adored? So it would be among 
angels ; but can we suppose it would be among men? 
Are mortals admired in proportion to their virtues? 
What of Noah, Daniel, Jeremiah, and them that 
wandered in sheep-skins and goat-skins, destitute, 
afflicted, tormented, slaughtered? Are not sweetest 
songs pressed from crushed souls? Is it not with 
throes that truths, like men, are born? Is it not by 
sacrifice that reforms are achieved? What expelled 
the Tarquins from Rome? The death of Lucretia. 
What overthrew the decemvirs? The sacrifice of 
Virginia. What silenced the oracles and prostrated 
the idols of the Roman world? The innocent blood 
that flowed over the sanctuary. What, after a night 
of ages, lighted up Europe? The fires which mar- 
tyrs fed. 
“Right forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne; 
But that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadows, keeping watch above his own.” 

Why the blood of martyrs is the seed of the 
Church, we inquire not; the fact answers the objec- 
tion to the sufferings of Messiah. But mark: these 
sufferings were both necessary and voluntary, 

a. To be the Messiah, he must be a teacher. 

6. To be our ¢eacher, he must be incarnate. Moses 
gave the law on stone; Christ sculptures it in human 
flesh, and animates it with human spirit. Prophets 


eS 


OBJECTIONS TO THE .CROSS. 325 


spake of immortality ; Christ passes humanity through 
the tomb in triumph to the skies. Had he lived an 
earthly life in Aeavenly radiance, he were no example 
for us; had he ascended the heavens on angels’ wings, 
he would have afforded no hope to dying man. 

But why should he not spring from the foam of 
the sea, or leap, full-armed, from the sky? 

c. To be the promised Savior, he must be born of 
woman. But why not bred in kings’ houses? To 
be the exemplar of the toiling millions, he must be 
poor; hence, he was cradled in a manger, sent forth 
in common paths of duty, was poorer than the foxes 
or the birds, left no property but the garments for 
which the soldiers gambled, and, dying, was embalmed 
with spices of charity, and laid in a borrowed tomb. 

d. To be a sympathizer, he must needs be a Suf- 
ferer. An angel mediator might have shrunk ap- 
palled at the degradation of man, and man would 
have shrunk abashed at the holiness of an angel. 

Poor, widowed, helpless woman, who, night after 
night, lookest at the sky to find some star, long 
familiar, blotted from thy sight, until the whole 
hemisphere is utter blackness to thy quenched eye- 
balls, look above those heavens to thine Elder 
Brother, who is touched with a feeling of thine in- 
firmities. 

Philanthropist, who hast been a mouth for the 
dumb and a hand for the chained innocent, when thou 
art defamed, impoverished, exiled by the tyrant, re- 
member, He who was led to Pilate can pity thee. 

Martyr, driven to the stake, pierced, mocked, 
and cursed, as thou art burned, think of him who, 


326 EVIDENCES OF REVELATION. 


crucified between thieves, and in the room of a mur 
derer, cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou for- 
saken me?” 

God’s beloved Son, leaving the echoes of his cries 
upon the mountains and the traces of his weary feet 
upon the streets, shedding his tears over the tombs 
and his blood upon Golgotha, associating his life 
with our homes, and his corpse with our sepulchers, 
shows us how we, too, may be sons in the humblest 
vale of life, and sure of sympathy in heaven amid the 
deepest wrongs and sorrows of earth. 

e. He must needs die to be the promised Priest 
because the sacrifices of the law could not make the 
comers thereunto perfect. 

He said: “Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, 
but a body hast thou prepared me. Lo, I come to 
do thy will ;” “By the which will we are sanctified,” 
atoned for. Some would teach us that Christ died as 
an example. Was it thus that the paschal lamb 
died, and the morning and evening sacrifice, and 
the bullock, whose blood the high-priest applied to 
the horns of the altar? He died, as in fable, Cocles 
did for Rome. “Come, then, let us reason together: 
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as snow.” 

J. He must needs suffer, that he may be our 
promised King. As man fell by losing confidence in 
God, he must be restored by regaining it. He can 
regain it only by witnessing some display of Divine 
love, and there is no representation equal to that of 
Calvary. Gaze upon its victim till you comprehend 
him, and your feet will enter the paths of a new 
obedience. 


OBJECTIONS TO. THE CROSS, 327 


Christ endured voluntarily. As the tempter knew, 
he could emancipate himself alike from physiological, 
physical, or political law, turn stone into bread, cast 
himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, or 
march to the conquest of the world. He whose 
“Ephphatha” opened the mouth of the dumb, whose 
touch gave sight to the blind, whose “I will” gave 
healing to the sick, whose “Come forth” brought 
Lazarus from the tomb, whose “ Peace, be still” the 
winds and the sea obeyed, might have come down 
from the cross, at once the wonder and the terror of 
his enemies ; but, for our sake, he forebore. 

But the dying youth between the dying thieves, 
the cold corpse with its weeping mourners !—the idea 
of connecting salvation with such scenes is foolish- 
ness to the wise. We pause not to show that Christ, 
though humbled unto death, was heralded by a long 
procession of prophets, types, and angels; that his 
birth, his baptism, and his Cross were attended with 
miracles ; that he exercised a strange dominion over 
physical nature and the human faculties, and pos- 
sessed the spirit of prophecy,—but remark that re- 
sults show the Cross to be the wisdom of God and the 
power of God unto salvation. 


THE END. 


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